Photographers from around the world recently submitted 20,000-odd images of bird species to the Bird Photographer of the Year contest. The showcase captures the diversity of the class Aves, as well as the dramatically different habitats the animals occupy and the ecological niches they inhabit.
(Un?)fortunately for you, this slideshow is not 20,000 pages long. But here’s the cream of the crop from those submissions: 27 award-winning images of the bevy of birds on our planet.