These 20 Breathtaking Bird Images From the Audubon Photography Awards Capture the Wonder of the Winged World

The National Audubon Society has unveiled a collection of 20 bird images, including winners and honorable mentions from the 17th Audubon Photography Awards, presenting a visual account of movement, habitat and survival. The annual competition recognizes still photographs and videos that document bird behavior. This year’s selected work ranges from intimate encounters to expansive scenes, offering a record of animals whose daily lives often unfold far from public view.

The awards are about more than plumage or portraiture. The chosen entries direct attention to what birds do, where they live and the conditions they navigate. In that sense, the competition treats photography as a way to consider both spectacle and circumstance: the environments that make a dramatic image possible can also reveal the pressures facing the species within them.

Among the images highlighted in the announcement is a seabird passing over an erupting volcano, a pairing of flight and geological force that makes the bird’s scale and vulnerability immediately apparent. Another photograph catches a woodpecker with its head pushed into a blossom. Together, those moments illustrate the variety the awards seek to preserve—birds in motion, at work and embedded in distinctive landscapes rather than isolated from them.

The top honor in the United States and Canada portion of the contest went to photographer Jacqueline Burke for an image of a roseate spoonbill bathing. The photograph shifts attention away from the feeding scenes commonly associated with the species. Instead of depicting the spoonbill searching for food, it captures a different part of its routine, turning a familiar bird into the subject of a more unexpected scene.

Mary Anne Karren, a wildlife photographer who served as a competition judge, said the panel responded to the picture’s “action, drama and striking lighting.” Her assessment points to the elements that can elevate wildlife photography beyond identification: timing, light and behavior must meet in a fraction of a moment. Karren also described Burke’s image as an unusual treatment of a frequently photographed bird, distinguishing it from the foraging views audiences may know best.

That distinction matters because bird photography can shape which aspects of animal life receive attention. A recognizable species may be photographed repeatedly, yet a single image can still make viewers reconsider it when the setting, behavior or composition changes. The spoonbill photograph does not alter the bird’s identity; it changes the frame through which that identity is seen, emphasizing bathing rather than feeding.

The competition’s wider selection makes a similar argument across species and locations. By including photographs and videos focused on behavior, Audubon brings together images that can show birds as travelers, nesters, hunters, feeders or occupants of threatened places. Migratory journeys are part of that story, as are the risks birds encounter along the way. The result is a collection built around lives in progress, not simply attractive subjects at rest.

There is also a useful tension in the awards’ visual appeal. Dramatic wildlife images can invite admiration, but the same scenes can expose difficult realities about habitat and danger. A volcano-side flight may read first as an extraordinary photograph; it can also prompt questions about the challenging settings birds inhabit. The contest does not reduce those conditions to a single message, but it makes room for beauty and vulnerability to appear in the same frame.

For audiences, the announcement provides a chance to look beyond conventional bird portraits and toward the circumstances behind them. The winners and honorable mentions offer examples of how patience, access and timing can reveal behavior that is easily missed. As the 17th edition circulates, the next point to watch is how viewers respond to images that pair visual drama with a reminder that birds depend on the places through which they move, feed and survive.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine