Audubon Photography Awards 2025 expands to South America

The National Audubon Society has introduced the winners of the 2025 Audubon Photography Awards. And in its sixteenth yr, it has expanded to budding photographers capturing wildlife in Chile and Colombia, and provides new prizes for snappers capturing the subject material of migratory species, habitats, and conservation.

“North America has lost three billion birds since 1970, and more than 500 bird species are at risk of extinction across Latin America and the Caribbean,” the National Audubon Society mentioned in an announcement. “Birds act as early warning systems about the health of our environment, and they tell us that birds – and our planet – are in crisis.”

For the primary time, judges awarded 9 prizes to Chile and Colombia residents, and eight extra for US and Canada locals. The yr additionally celebrates a brand new class – Birds Without Borders – that focuses on birds with migratory paths that cross worldwide boundaries, and the Conservation Prize. Well recognized classes, just like the Grand Prize, Birds in Landscapes Prize, Youth Prize, Plants for Birds Prize, Female Bird Prize, and Video Prize, all returned this yr.

Chile and Colombia has turn into a brand new space of curiosity for the awards, on account of each nations’ biodiverse landscapes and seabird populations. And seabirds that migrate between these nations and North America face intense environmental challenges, and lots of of those birds – together with the royal tern, snow goose and blackburnian warbler are featured amongst these photos.

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 National Audubon Society works to guard these birds from the double menace of local weather change and biodiversity loss, and this yr the acclaimed images awards spotlight this story of hemispheric hen conservation and the way linked persons are in numerous nations as a result of marvel of hen migration.

“The National Audubon Society is a nonprofit conservation organization that protects birds and the places they need today and tomorrow,” the group famous. “We work throughout the Americas towards a future where birds thrive because Audubon is a powerful, diverse, and ever-growing force for conservation. Audubon has more than 700 staff working across the hemisphere and more than 1.5 million active supporters.”

“Together as one Audubon, we are working to alter the course of climate change and habitat loss, leading to healthier bird populations and reversing current trends in biodiversity loss,” the staff added.

Here are a number of of our highlights – for extra, see our gallery.

2025 Plants for Birds Winner, United States and Canada

Barbara Swanson/Audubon Photography Awards

Californian resident Barbara Swanson snapped this elegant Brandt’s cormorant (Phalacrocorax penicillatus) with a beakful of pink grape algae and seagrass. The largest 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 Without Borders Winner, Chile and Colombia

Jacobo Giraldo Trejos/Audubon Photography Awards

Jacobo Giraldo Trejos grew to become the competitors’s first-ever winner of the Birds Without 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 Photography Awards

Canadian native Liron Gertsman took this eerily stunning picture of a powerful frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) flyover, beneath clouds and the Sun in Teacapán, Mexico. These birds have a fairly distinctive foraging trick – they will chase different birds and harass them till they regurgitate not too long ago consumed meals, which the frigatebirds will then snatch and eat mid-air.

2025 Conservation Winner, United States and Canada

Jean Hall/Audubon Photography Awards

Maine native Jean Hall 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 residence; these owls are primarily terrestrial, and so they dwell underground in burrows they’ve both dug or taken over from a prairie canine.

2025 Coastal Birds Chile Honorable Mention, Chile and Colombia

Solange Sepulveda/Audubon Photography Awards

Normally sleek, these two black-necked stilts (Himantopus mexicanus) have 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, displaying simply how versatile these stilt legs are. These gorgeous shorebirds could 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.

Source: National Audubon Society