The National Audubon Society has announced the winning bird photos of the 2025 Audubon Photography Awards featuring stunning imagery that highlights the beauty and joy of birds and fascinating avian behaviors.
Celebrating its 16th year, the photography contest features images from professionals, amateurs and young people highlighting not only the beauty of birds but also the story of hemispheric bird conservation, the ways birds connect people across geographies and ecosystems and the joy of capturing it all through photographs and videos.
This year, the awards have expanded to Chile and Colombia and also include a new Birds Without Borders Prize, depicting birds with migratory paths that cross international boundaries, and the Conservation Prize, illustrating conservation challenges that birds face and methods to address those challenges to help them thrive.
Chile and Colombia are home to some of the world’s most biodiverse landscapes and seascapes. Many of the birds that migrate between these countries and Canada and the United States are vulnerable to extinction due to climate change and loss of biodiversity.
Audubon works to protect these birds through coordinated efforts across countries and regions to ensure their survival — including species featured in this year’s awards like the Royal Tern, Snow Goose and Blackburnian Warbler.
“Birds are telling us – in their behavior, in their dwindling numbers, in their silence – that we must take action now, and that we must take action where birds need us most, from the Arctic to Chile and everywhere in between,” the organizers write.
The Grand Prize for Colombia and Chile was awarded to Chilean photographer Felipe Esteban Toledo who, while looking to photograph frogs’ mating rituals at a lagoon in Valdivia’s Parque Saval, noticed a pair of Ringed Kingfishers hunting fish.
The Grand Prize for the U.S. and Canada went to Canadian photographer Liron Gertsman for his photo of Frigatebirds as they passed a stunning halo in the sky. Frigatebirds are a common sight in many coastal towns in Mexico. As a kleptoparasitic species, they may look to steal a meal from other seabirds, or from local fishermen.
Grand Prize Bird Photos
The Grand Prize Winner for the new Colombia and Chile category was awarded to this image of a blue-and-gray kingfisher flying out of the water, creating a splash around its wet body, shaggy crest, white collar and rufous belly. Countless tiny droplets are in sharp focus.
The largest of the six kingfisher species in the Americas, the Ringed Kingfisher ranges from Texas to southern South America. In tropical regions, where four or five species may occur together, the birds avoid competition by chasing different prey from different heights. The smallest may sit just inches above the water seeking tiny fish or insects. The Ringed Kingfisher perches up to 30 feet above the surface, watching for medium-size fish and then plunging in headfirst with a mighty splash.
This image of nearly two dozen frigatebirds flying across a dark blue sky is the Grand Prize Winner and the Birds in Landscapes Winner for the United States and Canada.
Their long, narrow wings and forked tails stand out against wispy clouds and the sun, which is surrounded by a bright halo.
It seems like evolution’s cruel practical joke, but frigatebirds are true seabirds that must avoid landing on the sea. An individual that lands on the surface may struggle to take off again and if its feathers become soaked, it may drown.
So frigatebirds fly over the ocean for days or weeks at a time seeking meals. They are well equipped for the task: A frigatebird’s feathers together weigh twice as much as its skeleton.
Birds, Plants, Landscapes
A hummingbird with bright hues of electric purple, black, and specks of yellow hovers in the center of the frame as it dips its long beak into a cluster of golden flowers in Los Nevados National Natural Park, Caldas, Colombia. The area is home to a sub-páramo ecosystem, a cool forest rich in biodiversity.
In the American tropics, many hummingbird species can coexist because they differ in bill shapes and feeding behaviors that evolved with native plants. Very long-billed species hover at long, tubular flowers, while curve-billed ones may specialize on curved blooms.
The Purple-backed Thornbill, with the shortest bill of any hummingbird, often clings to clusters of small flowers like these, sometimes reaching the nectar by inserting its bill through slits in the base of the flower tube. It also eats tiny insects, catching them in midair.
A Burrowing Owl, framed by a pile of lumber boards complete with numbers, peers straight and boldly at the camera in Marco Island, Florida.
This defiant guy decided to use a huge lumber pile as his roost for days. Burrowing Owl habitat is almost gone, especially on Marco Island, but the birds’ toughness is hard to defeat.
The Burrowing Owl requires large tracts of open ground, preferably with areas of bare soil, for its underground nesting burrows. Such landscapes were once common in North America — both in the west (where prairie dog colonies provided an abundance of holes) and in Florida (where the owls generally dig their own).
But the spread of agriculture and extermination of prairie dogs have sharply reduced the owl’s western populations. In Florida, remaining areas of open ground are being consumed by housing developments.
About 25 flamingos stand in shallow water on a beach, their backlit bodies casting shadows on the water as a low, flat layer of clouds and looming mountain silhouettes form the background. Warm sunlight envelopes the scene. Despite very few daytime hours, the sunlight in Patagonia is exquisite in winter.
Many think of flamingos as tropical birds but three South American species live in cold climates. All can be found on the Altiplano, the plateau between the highest ridges of the southern Andes, where they use their odd bills to filter tiny crustaceans, insects, and diatoms from shallow, salty lakes.
The most numerous of the three, the Chilean Flamingo, also lives at sea level, all the way to the frigid, extreme south of the continent.
The blue heads of two parrots emerge from a hole in a curved tree branch above a busy street in Cali, Colombia. Down below, people in cars and buses are going about their daily business as the parrots observe the humans, who, in their rush to progress, miss out on all kinds of expressions of life.
Among the more widespread and common parrot species in northern South America, pairs or flocks of Blue-headed Parrots fly with deep, quick wingbeats and shrill cries at treetop level. They seem more adaptable than many other parrots and can even thrive around city edges, as long as each pair can find a tree cavity large enough to hold their nest.
A black cormorant, blue eyes fixed and wings sweep forward as it carries grassy material and a strand of pink bulbous algae to its nest.
The image was captured in January in La Jolla, California, when cormorants were building their nests. This bird carried not only the usual seagrass but also a strand of red grape algae, which glowed like translucent jewels.
We might not think of seabirds as being reliant on plants, but many of the cormorants use plant material to build substantial nests on rocky ledges. The male does most of the gathering, but both parents arrange the nest.
Birds Without Borders
A white and gray Royal Tern hovers in the air as it feeds fish to a juvenile perched on a railing. The adult tern flew tirelessly, looking for fish to feed its young, which patiently waited.
While most songbirds are independent within weeks of leaving the nest, Royal Terns have a long adolescence. Their parents may feed them for up to eight months, even as the family migrates together, some flying all the way from the eastern United States to South America’s Pacific coast.
Thousands of white geese, their individual bodies barely visible, fill the frame as their blurred yellow-and white wings create an abstract pattern.
Snow Geese are creatures of habit. A female ready to breed for the first time usually returns to a place near where she hatched, followed by a male she had met in the south; they mate for life and will return to the same spot every summer.
Every winter, tens of thousands migrate from Siberia to Washington’s Skagit Valley, where they stay from October to April. Massive flocks — some numbering more than 10,000 birds — take off together in breathtaking, synchronized motion.
When danger nears, the first few birds flap their wings, sending a cascading signal that triggers a collective launch. Although they move as one, each bird follows its own rhythm and direction, creating a mesmerizing mixture of order and chaos.
A small shorebird with white plumage dotted with brown and gold highlights rests in water. Despite the serenity of the moment, the bird, also known as Greater Yellowlegs in the North and Pitotoy Grande in the South, was hunting.
The roofs of the surrounding houses tinted the water red and delicate golden ripples encircled the bird.
Most members of the sandpiper family tend to be sociable. Some gather in dense flocks during migration and non-breeding season, feeding on tiny organisms that abound on tidal flats.
But the Greater Yellowlegs is the opposite. Usually solitary or in very small flocks, it wades in shallow water to pursue more dispersed prey, including large aquatic insects and small fish.
Breeding at scattered ponds in boreal forest across southern Alaska and central Canada, it spreads out to wintering sites all the way from the southern United States to the southern tip of South America.
It was winter, so dusk came early in Chile as a small owl with yellow eyes and fluffy brown plumage perched on a thorny branch surrounded by red rose hips and the sunset’s blue tint in the background. Its profile was unmistakable: a chuncho.
Pygmy-owls are widespread, with about two dozen species scattered across five continents, although there are seldom more than one or two species found at any given locale. Very small (as their name suggests) and often active by day, they hunt small birds, rodents, large insects, lizards and other creatures, searching for prey and then attacking with short, swift flights.
The Austral Pygmy-Owl is the only representative in southern South America, where it is common in beech forests and other open woods and even flies into city parks.
Shorebirds stand on a dark, rocky surface against dark clouds as blurred waves crash against the rocks. Hundreds of Sanderlings flocked to the rocky shoreline to feed.
Sanderlings are birds of extremes. Almost all their breeding sites lie north of the Arctic Circle, on open tundra. But when they depart these remote regions, they may fly to shorelines practically anywhere in the world, spending the winter along coasts from Japan, England and Canada to the southern reaches of Australia, Africa, and South America. There they focus on the water’s shifting edge, where waves crash on beaches or rocks. Dashing back and forth, the Sanderlings snatch tiny invertebrates left behind by each retreating wave.
While pursuing an elusive male Rufous Hummingbird at Stonewall Peak in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California, Taryn Ware spotted a snag full of the riches that give Acorn Woodpeckers their name.
Soon, a female appeared.
Acorn Woodpeckers are famed for (and named for) their food-storing behavior. Living in colonies, they work together to create “granary” trees where they drill numerous holes and hide an acorn in each. All members of the colony dine on the acorns later.
Unlike many birds, most woodpeckers have more-or-less equal sex roles. Female and male participate in harvesting and storing acorns, take part in incubating eggs and feeding young. A single nest may be tended by multiple adults of both sexes.
A brown female duck rests amid rushing water. A series of rocks point to the distant bird as the currents look like clouds in the sky.
Only a few duck species are adapted to live in rushing streams. The well-named Torrent Ducks, denizens of the Andes from Venezuela to Argentina, are the ultimate examples.
They favor steep, narrow gorges, diving and swimming beneath the surface where the waters leap and tumble over boulders. Big feet and strong legs propel them through the swift current, while their long tails help provide steering.
Baby Torrent Ducks enter their turbulent world early: They can swim expertly within a few hours after hatching.
Looking for condors at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park in California at dawn, Jake Hilygus found a pair of Common Ravens hopping from boulder to boulder, never leaving each other’s side. They showed no fear and seemed curious about the camera. They preened each other’s feathers and nestled close together in the soft morning light.
Indigenous cultures all over the Northern Hemisphere have admired Common Ravens for millennia. Considered to be among the most intelligent of birds, with a level of awareness that seems eerily human, the members of a mated pair of ravens stay together at all seasons, foraging cooperatively and even engaging in active play. The two birds often perch very close together, preening each other’s feathers — a behavior called allopreening — which probably helps strengthen their bond.
Here you can see all the winners and honorable-mention-awarded bird photos as well as the top 100 images and videos.
The next contest will open on January 15, 2026.