Stunning Bird Photographs Showcase Incredible Views of Life on the Wing

Science and photography often go hand in hand for strictly practical purposes, but every now and then, we should stop and take a moment to appreciate the beauty, complexity and sometimes brutality of the world seen through the lens of a camera. This year’s Bird Photographer of the Year competition winners offer us both a celebration of avian diversity and human creativity as well as a window into our evolving relationships with these animals.

Photographer Patricia Seaton Homonylo of Ontario took home the gold award in the conservation category and the Bird Photographer of the Year title, along with £3,500 (about $4,670), in this year’s competition, which saw more than 23,000 images submitted to three youth categories and eight adult categories. The stunning category winners are just as diverse in location, style and color as the birds they capture. And the incredible skill needed comes through in the images themselves and the stories the photographers share.

Sometimes a truly incredible photograph arises spontaneously. The photographer needs to be in the right place at the right time with the knowledge and ability to take advantage of the moment—as is often the case with the photographs in the comedy category of this competition. It is hard to predict when an animal is going to do something funny, after all. In some cases, the photographer must recognize the emotional impact of the scene and then somehow capture that abstract emotion in a still frame.

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And often the images are products of hours and hours of intentional work. They require familiarity with an animal’s behavior, gained through spending significant amounts of time with it. They require a vision of the photograph in mind and the setup for it—even if the animal is nowhere to be found at first. And of course, they require patience in waiting for the animal to arrive and for the ambient light to be just right—and in taking a soul-crushing number of bad and “so close” photographs, burning through digital memory and batteries all the while. Eventually all of these elements come together to capture a spectacular moment frozen in time.

Technology can make taking these kind of awe-inspiring photographs easier, but it’s also easy for these remarkable images to fly by online and disappear in an instant. Photography competitions bring these spectacular images back into view and remind us that the world can be a magical place.

Bird Photographer of the Year; Conservation: Gold Winner

At the boundary where wilderness meets sprawling humanity, there is tragedy. An estimated 100 million to one billion birds die every year from collisions with glass facades, especially during annual migration, and Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada has done its best to collect and honor these fallen birds for more than 30 years. Volunteers created this “bird layout” in 2022, comprising the remains of more than 4,000 birds, to memorialize these lost lives. Canadian photographer Patricia Seaton Homonylo captured this photograph, entitled When Worlds Collide, as a FLAP Canada volunteer.

Young Bird Photographer of the Year; Age 12–14: Gold Winner

In a wonderful display of planning and patience, young photographer Andrés Luis Domínguez Blanco of Spain captured this Eurasian Nuthatch’s view of the world using a remote-controlled camera mounted to a tree. “I thought about what their vision and perspective would be like,” Blanco said in a statement. All that was left was for the bird to enter the picture, entitled Perspective.

Birds in Flight: Gold Winner

Dawn’s Whispers: Graceful Hoopoe Silhouette at Sunrise is the product of detailed observation, planning and patience on the part of the photographer, Hermis Haridas, who took this photograph in the United Arab Emirates. He first spent a day watching the Eurasian Hoopoe as it repeatedly flew the same route between the tree where it found its prey and the tree where it ate it. After conceiving the idea of this image, Haridas returned the next morning, set a camera up to document the hoopoe’s commute and captured a moment he described as “brimming with unique charm.”

Black and White: Bronze Winner

Not all photographs require traipsing through forests or swamps—some can be taken right from your living room. Photographer Sparky Stensaas of Minnesota did just that when he captured Snow Turkeys from the comfortable side of a window. Creativity has no boundaries, let alone ones made of glass.

Best Portrait: Silver Winner

Sometimes photographers conceive of an image long before they have the opportunity or ability to realize it. That was exactly the case for Samual Stone of the U.K. “Each time I attempted to turn it into reality, one of the elements was not right,” he said. “It felt like I was in a creative rut.” In one last-ditch effort, Stone again visited his local Mute Swans. This time, mist descended and the swans aligned, allowing Stone to capture the photograph of his dreams: Swanception.

Birds in Flight: Silver Winner

In another example where the prudent planner gets the frame, photographer Nicolas Groffal of France set up in the garden to capture European Goldfinches as they bandied about trying to find food in winter. “Hundreds of shots were required before I captured the perfect moment, which portrayed the fleeting magic of nature in winter,” Groffal said. This photograph is entitled Heavenly Elegant Flight.

Conservation: Silver Winner

In Inmates, Cheng Kang of Australia captures a poignant moment in one of Bali’s bird markets. Two birds get as close to each other as they possibly can—but it’s still not enough. “The pair of lovebirds face each other in separate cages, appearing to say their final farewells, not knowing if they will see each other again,” Kang said. “Who knows what joys they would have experienced together in their lush native rainforests and whether they will ever experience that again.”

Conservation: Bronze Winner

The cords that bind this nest together also form a noose—but life for these Northern Gannets continues. With the photograph, entitled Postmortem and taken in Scotland, American photographer Joshua Galicki said that he intended to remind us that human-made trash “is an additional obstacle we put in the way of this species, which is compounded with other challenges, including disease and climate change.”

Comedy: Gold Winner

Sliding into gold for the comedy category, American photographer Nadia Haq captured this adorable Adélie Penguin tobogganing on the ice near Brown Bluff in Antarctica. In A Modern Dancer, Haq captures a moment that Olympic breakdancers might one day aspire to achieve as gracefully.

Best Portrait: Gold Winner

On a snowy day in Homer, Alaska, photographer Alan Murphy stumbled upon this Grey-crowned Rosy Finch, which waited patiently as he rushed to set up his tripod and camera and hurriedly captured a handful of frames—before it decided to fly off. Backdropped against colorful boats in a marina and lit by the type of flat, magical light that comes from falling snow, this portrait is like a breath of fresh air. Can you smell the evergreen?