Owls, puffins, and even city pigeons glam it up in winning bird photos

Birds chirp, cheep, and coo, but these Audubon pics might leave you speechless.

By

Maddi Langweil
|

Published Jun 21, 2023 5:30 PM EDT

A northern hawk-owl glares at the camera in a photo that received the Professional Honorable Mention in this year’s Audubon photography awards. Liron Gertsman/Audubon Photography Awards/2023 Professional Honorable Mention

Birds, often overlooked amid the hustle of daily life, grace virtually all of our surroundings. They play keen ecological roles as predators, pollinators, and seed-spreaders. Whether they fly above our heads or burrow below ground, many of these special creatures may be harmed by human activity and climate change, which some of the 2023 Audubon Photography Awards images aim to showcase. With a snap, click, and a whole lot of patience, the winners of this competition have captured the common and uncommon fliers around the world. 

To snap the grand prize shot, professional photographer Liron Gertsman traveled about an hour south of his home in Vancouver, Canada, to squat under a pier. There he focused his lens on a familiar pair of birds, rock pigeons, often seen scavenging for food in crowded cities. Pigeons, like the couple Gertsman found, stay together for life. With a portable Canon camera, the grand prize winner captured the piercing eyes and multi-colored feathers of the birds. 

Other competitors strayed farther from home, as distant as an Arctic cove, to snap shots of these warm-blooded animals in their habitats. They found wildlife as still as an Atlantic puffin quietly sitting on a cliff or as dynamic as a dunlin leaping by the waves. For more information and meaning behind each shot, visit the Audubon site, where you can check out the other winners and the video awards, too.

Two rock pigeons face left in profile, each with one orange eye in view against a black background. One bird is preening the other, its bill buried in iridescent feathers. Liron Gertsman/Audubon Photography Awards/2023 Grand Prize Winner

An Atlantic puffin sits on the edge of a craggy cliffside, its head turned, its white breast in sharp contrast to the gray background. Lime green algae and small purple wildflowers drape the cliff. Shane Kalyn/Audubon Photography Awards/2023 Professional Winner

[Related: Wild birds don’t need your backyard feeders to survive]

A Chinstrap penguin, wings outstretched, dives from an iceberg. Karen Blackwood/Audubon Photography Awards/2023 Amateur Winner

A sandpiper called a dunlin appears to have jumped from the rocks to avoid an incoming wave. Kieran Barlow/Audubon Photography Awards/2023 Youth Winner

[Related: Your state bird probably needs a makeover. Birder data is here to help.]

A reddish egret stands in shallow water with its wings outstretched. A small fish is suspended in the air in front of the bird’s open bill. Nathan Arnold /Audubon Photography Awards/2023 Amateur Honorable Mention

A gray verdin with a yellow head and a small rust-colored patch on its wing stands in profile on a broken cactus branch. The bird carries a pale green caterpillar in its bill. Linda Scher/Audubon Photography Awards/2023 Plants For Birds Winner

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