Thank you, Tufted Titmouse.
A tiny, thieving bird helped one of my videos reach the finals in the 2021 Audubon Photography Awards’ video division. The competition included both amateur and professional videographers, and my entry placed fourth. I’m truly an amateur behind the camera, so imagine my surprise and delight.
Before entering the contest, I wrote a blog post about the bird’s curious behavior–taking hair from mammals, humans included, to use as nesting material. The theft victim in my video is a snoozing raccoon. The best part is the raccoon’s reaction when being plucked finally wakes him up.
The video is featured in that blog post, and for convenience I’ll also include it here.
This video is silent, as audio was optional for the contest, and mostly, what I captured was background noise that day.
Here’s another video I captured as the bird was filching fur. You are not going to believe how much fur that bird stole from the raccoon!
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to explore Audubon’s 2021 photography contest site, which shows all of that year’s wonderful winning and finalist photos, including the video winner and runner-up.
I also highly recommend Audubon’s 2021 ‘top ten’ video page, which includes my video and nine more finalists. I am humbled to be included in such fantastic company.
Audubon has a photography contest every year. Be sure to check out 2022’s winning photos and videos, and to look for the event every year.
