The 2016 探花精选 Photography Awards: Top 100

For the first time ever, there鈥檚 a sage-grouse.

Every year we field thousands of entries for the 探花精选 Photography Awards, and every year we have to make the terrible choice of picking just a handful of winners. Lucky for us, our readers are always hungry for more amazing bird pics. So we'd like to share a hundred of our favorites (in no particular order) in the gallery above鈥攅njoy!

Quick Stats:

Participants: More than 1,700

Images entered: Nearly 7,000

Categories: Amateur, Professional, Fine Art, Youth

Entrants from: 50 states, 6 provinces, District of Columbia

Judges

Kenn Kaufman: , 探花精选 field editor

Melissa Groo:  and 2015 Grand Prize winner

Steve Freligh: Co-publisher of 

Kevin Fisher: 探花精选 creative director

Sabine Meyer: 探花精选 photography director

Judging criteria: Technical quality, originality, artistic merit

See the 2016 winners here.