[Posted by Chuck Almdale]

Link to 2025 National Audubon Society winners.
The best 100 of somewhere in the high thousands of entries.
Hallmarks: Clear, sharp, well-framed, interesting, unusual views, unusual behaviors, unusual angles.

Pied-billed Grebe toying with a crayfish. No. 93 in the 2025 NAS photo contest.
(Trish Oster, Legacy Park, Malibu 14 Apr 2024). Birds always swallow fish
head first, but when the beast come front-loaded with weaponry,
that might not be the best tactic.

Among the 100 top photos in the NAS contest, for at least the third year in a row, is #93 by Trish Oster, local birder & bird photographer who occasionally joins us on our Malibu Lagoon bird walks. Trish sent me a copy of the photo. I’ve birded with Trish and I’ve never seen her without her camera, even when eating lunch, and I suspect she had the camera permanently grafted onto her arm, or perhaps it was only the quick-release attachment, which is one reason why she gets so many great photos.

The NAS website has the following photo information:

Contest: United States and Canada
Image Location: Legacy Park, Malibu, California, United States
Camera: Canon EOS R6 with a Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM lens; 1/3200 second at f/7.1; ISO 8000
Behind the Shot: A juvenile grebe was foraging in our little local pond. As I was observing the bird, it dove down and came up with a very large non-native red swamp crayfish. At first, I thought it had bitten off more than it could chew. Since I hand-hold my camera, I set a higher shutter speed of 1/3200 sec to compensate for the movement and lowered my exposure to -0.3 EV to make the grebe and the crayfish stand out. After much effort, the grebe miraculously swallowed the crayfish whole. It not only got a well-deserved meal—it was also cleaning our waterways, one invasive crustacean at a time.

Some additional NAS photography links:
2025 Contest Winners: Top 15 Photos & 2 Videos
2025 Contest Honorable Mentions: The next 15
How to become a better bird photographers: Advice from the winners