The Nationwide Audubon Society has introduced the winners of the 2025 Audubon Photography Awards. And in its sixteenth 12 months, it has expanded to budding photographers capturing wildlife in Chile and Colombia, and presents new prizes for snappers capturing the subject material of migratory species, habitats, and conservation.
“North America has misplaced three billion birds since 1970, and greater than 500 chicken species are liable to extinction throughout Latin America and the Caribbean,” the Nationwide Audubon Society mentioned in an announcement. “Birds act as early warning methods in regards to the well being of our surroundings, and so they inform us that birds – and our planet – are in disaster.”
For the primary time, judges awarded 9 prizes to Chile and Colombia residents, and eight extra for US and Canada locals. The 12 months additionally celebrates a brand new class – Birds With out Borders – that focuses on birds with migratory paths that cross worldwide boundaries, and the Conservation Prize. Well-known classes, just like the Grand Prize, Birds in Landscapes Prize, Youth Prize, Vegetation for Birds Prize, Feminine Hen Prize, and Video Prize, all returned this 12 months.
Chile and Colombia has change into a brand new space of curiosity for the awards, as a consequence of each nations’ biodiverse landscapes and seabird populations. And seabirds that migrate between these nations and North America face intense environmental challenges, and plenty of of those birds – together with the royal tern, snow goose and blackburnian warbler are featured amongst these pictures.
The Grand Prize Winner from these South American nations was Felipe Esteban Toledo Alarcón for his dazzling seize of a ringed kingfisher (Megaceryle torquata), pictured above.
The Nationwide Audubon Society works to guard these birds from the double menace of local weather change and biodiversity loss, and this 12 months the acclaimed pictures awards spotlight this story of hemispheric chicken conservation and the way related persons are in several nations as a result of marvel of chicken migration.
“The Nationwide Audubon Society is a nonprofit conservation group that protects birds and the locations they want right this moment and tomorrow,” the group famous. “We work all through the Americas in direction of a future the place birds thrive as a result of Audubon is a robust, various, and ever-growing power for conservation. Audubon has greater than 700 workers working throughout the hemisphere and greater than 1.5 million energetic supporters.”
“Collectively as one Audubon, we’re working to change the course of local weather change and habitat loss, resulting in more healthy chicken populations and reversing present tendencies in biodiversity loss,” the crew added.
Listed here are just a few of our highlights – for extra, see our gallery.
2025 Vegetation for Birds Winner, United States and Canada
Barbara Swanson/Audubon Pictures Awards
Californian resident Barbara Swanson snapped this elegant Brandt’s cormorant (Phalacrocorax penicillatus) with a beakful of pink grape algae and seagrass. The biggest species of cormorant on the US Pacific Coast, these marine birds can dive deep under the ocean floor to catch fish and shellfish.
2025 Birds With out Borders Winner, Chile and Colombia
Jacobo Giraldo Trejos/Audubon Pictures Awards
Jacobo Giraldo Trejos grew to become the competitors’s first-ever winner of the Birds With out Borders class, for his shot of royal terns (Thalasseus maximus) at mealtime on San Andrés Island, Colombia. This inhabitants of birds breed at nesting websites spanning California to Mexico and the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and spend winters in South America, from Brazil to Peru.
2025 Grand Prize Winner, United States and Canada
Liron Gertsman/Audubon Pictures Awards
Canadian native Liron Gertsman took this eerily lovely picture of a powerful frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) flyover, beneath clouds and the Solar in Teacapán, Mexico. These birds have a relatively distinctive foraging trick – they will chase different birds and harass them till they regurgitate just lately consumed meals, which the frigatebirds will then snatch and eat mid-air.
2025 Conservation Winner, United States and Canada
Jean Corridor/Audubon Pictures Awards
Maine native Jean Corridor took this picture of a curious – and apparently considerably perturbed – burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia) on Marco Island, Florida. It appears prefer it’s taken up residence in a country tiny dwelling; these owls are primarily terrestrial, and so they reside underground in burrows they’ve both dug or taken over from a prairie canine.
2025 Coastal Birds Chile Honorable Point out, Chile and Colombia
Solange Sepulveda/Audubon Pictures Awards
Usually sleek, these two black-necked stilts (Himantopus mexicanus) had been captured in an amusing pose by Santiago snapper Solange Sepulveda in Papudo, Chile. The male balances on the feminine’s again and spreads his wings, exhibiting simply how versatile these stilt legs are. These beautiful shorebirds may be discovered alongside North and South American coastlines and wetlands.
For extra, go to Audubon’s web site for particulars on the Chile and Colombia and US and Canada contests, in addition to details about Audubon Americas and Audubon’s Plants for Birds program.
Supply: National Audubon Society
