Major expeditions, numerous attempts, and strokes of luck characterize how many of the top images in the 2026 Audubon Photography Awards came to be. Francisco Castro Escobar, for example, was surprised to see a rare lesser horned owl, sometimes referred to as “the ghost of the desert,” perched on a cactus in northern Chile during a dawn hike. “The largest owl in Chile gets this nickname because seeing one is so rare that it’s like an apparition,” Escobar says. The image also took the grand prize for the Chile/Colombia contest.
Audubon Photography Awards runs two parallel opportunities, one for photographers in the U.S. and Canada and the other for those based in Chile and Colombia. This year, the grand prize for North American entrants went to Jacqueline Burke for her bold capture of a bathing roseate spoonbill illuminated against the shadowed interior of a cove in Florida. Additional prize categories include Birds Without Borders, Plants for Birds, Youth, Conservation, and others.
The array of images capture the daily behaviors and habits of birds around the world, from hunting raptors to nectar-seeking woodpeckers. In addition to dramatic, sometimes humorous shots of avians in flight, eating, swimming, and more, we also discover some of the ways human activities put the animals at risk. Josh Galicki’s photo of nesting northern gannets in Shetland reveal how jettisoned old fishing nets have been scavenged for nests on a cliff face, but the same material poses a constant risk to the animals’ safety.
Across the board, the winning photographs illuminate the world’s immense avian diversity, from diminutive, jewel-like hummingbirds to seabirds that dive like torpedos to catch their prey. “Hours, days, or sometimes even years of patience and effort go into creating a scenario in which a photographer is in the right place, at the right time, to capture a fleeting moment,” Audubon says.
See all the winners and honorable mentions, including videos, on the contest’s website.
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