First Come, First Served, Bronze winner, category: Birds in Flight. Two Southern Yellow-billed ... [+]
The Bird Photographer of the Year (BPOTY) has unveiled the winning photos of its international 2021 competition.
The image below of a road runner stopped in its tracks at the U.S.-Mexico border wall was this year’s overall winner.
The photo by Mexican photographer Alejandro Prieto was selected from more than 22,000 submissions by photographers from around the world and takes a £5,000 grand prize and the coveted title of Bird Photographer of the Year.
“I have watched many different animals reach the wall before turning around and heading back,” Prieto explained. ”The border wall, which crosses not only deserts but also mountains and even mangroves, poses a real threat to biodiversity in the area through habitat fragmentation.
It physically blocks crucial migration routes for animals such as the longhorn sheep, black bears, bison, and even jaguars.”
“Prieto’s image immediately caught the attention of the judges. It is not your typical bird photo, and the story behind the image is so strong,” said Will Nicholls, Director of Bird Photographer of the Year. “The roadrunner appears so vulnerable facing up to the huge border wall that dominates the frame.
BPOTY established the charity Birds on the Brink that funds and helps support bird-related conservation projects on a grant-awarding basis.
Photographers competed in eight categories: Best Portrait, Birds in the Environment, Attention to Detail, Bird Behaviour, Birds in Flight, Black and White, Urban Birds and Creative Imagery.
The contest includes also awards for best Youth, Conservation and Portfolio images.
The 2022 competition will open on September 30 and invites photographers of all experience levels.
Locked, Gold winner, category: Environment, and Bird Photographer of the Year.
The 3,000-kilometer border crosses and straddles some of the continent’s most biologically diverse regions. It’s home to uniquely-adapted mammals, reptiles, birds and plants, some of which are found nowhere else on the planet.
Border infrastructures not only physically block the movement of wildlife but also destroy and fragment habitats. In this photograph, a Greater Roadrunner approaches the border wall at Naco, Arizona, with what appears almost to be bewilderment.
Yellow-billed Oxpecker with Cape Buffalo, Bronze winner, category: Birds in the Environment.
Yellow-billed Oxpeckers chatter constantly as they fly in and out of a Cape Buffalo herds, landing wherever they can to rest and feed. They spend almost their entire lives around large mammals, to the point where even courtship and mating take place in their company.
Oxpeckers feed on ticks and other insects, although they also have a predilection for the mammal blood. In this image, both oxpecker and buffalo were in motion, moving in different directions and at different distances from the lens.
Claiming the Forest Floor, Silver winner, category: Birds in the Environment.
A male Ovenbird singing on top of a fallen log. The bird is staking its claim to a breeding territory shortly after arriving from a lengthy migration to the northeast United States from wintering grounds in Central America.
Ovenbirds are quite small – 15cm in length – and unlike most other New World warblers, prefer to forage on the forest floor among the leaf litter.
Growing Up, Silver winner, category: Attention to Detail.
Great Northern Divers (known in North America as Common Loons) and their chicks take to the water soon after the chicks hatch.
The size difference between adult and youngster is evident in this image and shows just how much growing is left for this tiny chick, dwarfed by the large bill of the adult it faces.
Disappearing, Gold winner, category: Attention to Detail.
Light undergoes incredible transformations when it interacts with water. In a way, it’s nature playing with us, our forms and the forms that we see.
In this shot, the same water that creates the reflection strikes with force to destroy it, in a sense to knock the King penguin down. Yet, the King is still standing — he knows his reign is not over yet. It will end the day that water no longer creates reflections in the sand.
Blue Flames, Bronze winner, category: Attention to Detail.
Rather than yet another photo of a Great Blue Heron just ‘standing there,’ the photographer decided to zoom in and focus on the feathers on its back.
Flipped upside down, the feathers look like an intricate illustration of fire, a forest or perhaps some kind of flower.
Underwater Portrait, Gold winner, category: Best Portrait.
This underwater image of a Brown Pelican was taken off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, near the mouth of the Tercoles River, where there are small fishing villages.
Groups of pelicans await the return of fishermen and take advantage of the scraps they throw into the sea. This image shows the similarity between the way the pouch beneath the pelican’s bill functions and the throat of a feeding baleen whale. At first glance, it looks more like a marine mammal than a bird.
Night Hunter, Bronze winner, category: Best Portrait.
Poised for attack and staring intently, this Great Grey Owl has fixed its penetrating gaze on a vole in a Swedish forest.
When the moon is full, the owl raises its deadly taloned foot as the photographer adds light to the scene with his car headlights. “When I looked at the photo afterwards, it gave me goosebumps,” he added.
Sing Heartily, Silver winner, category: Best Portrait.
June marks the start of the breeding season for Demoiselle Cranes on the vast grasslands of Keshiketeng in Inner Mongolia.
In the morning light, the figures of a Demoiselle Crane family of four gradually appeared out of the gloom. The distant sound of shepherds herding sheep could be heard as they were leisurely foraging for food. It seemed as if the sound was enough to inspire the pair of adults to call, as they stood back to back.
Floral Bathtub, Gold winner, category: Behaviour.
This image was taken at North Bengal Agricultural University in Cooch Behar,West Bengal. Autumn days in India are typically hot and humid with sporadic rains interspersed with sweltering heat.
Late one evening, a female Crimson Sunbird suddenly arrived and started sipping nectar from a banana flower. Her thirst quenched, she then started bathing in the water stored in the flower’s petal.
It’s quite common to find birds refreshing themselves in the evening in puddles and pools, dipping their heads and wetting their wings and body. However, it was a unique experience to see this sunbird immersing herself upside down in the water like a lady in a bathtub.
Entangled, Bronze winner, category: Bird Behaviour.
In the past, the Imperial Shag went by the name of King Cormorant. This sub-antarctic and Antarctic species breeds in dense colonies and on the Falkland Islands.
It favors gentle cliff-top slopes, often mixing with Southern Rockhopper Penguins and Black-browed Albatrosses.
Imperial Shags use various displays to reinforce pair-bonds, ranging from head-wagging, gargling and kinking their necks to making throat-clicking noises and nibbling or biting the tips of the bill. This pair allowed a close approach, and as one came in to land, they went through a ritual courtship greeting.
The Face of Death, Silver winner, category: Bird Behavior Category.
In late summer in the rice fields of northern Italy, prior to migrating south the region’s Purple Herons try to feed as much as possible and take advantage of the abundance of prey.
“I had long dreamt of a shot like this one that would allow to see the expressions of the two subjects – predator and prey,” explains the photographer.
Thirsty, Gold winner, category: Birds in Flight.
Common Swifts live their lives on the wing and are a challenge to capture in flight. With a diet of flying insects, they need to drink from time to time — and even that behaviour is performed on the wing.
The Art of Motion, Silver winner, category: Birds in Flight.
This image of a hummingbird in motion was taken Ecuador using a complicated set-up to trigger two sets of flashes during a single exposure. “I then tried to introduce a sense of movement into the image by adding continuous lighting to the scene,” said the photographer.
Chinstrap Penguin, Gold winner, category: Black and White.
A single Chinstrap Penguin walks alone on top of a giant iceberg in Antartica.
Feather Light, Silver winner, category: Black and White.
Backlit by the rising sun, this preening Northern Gannet paused momentarily to remove a displaced feather.
The merest suggestion of the bird’s outline becomes the focus. Yet, the species is still instantly recognisable.
Dipper on Shopping Trolle, Gold winner, category: Urban Birds.
A pair of White-throated Dippers nest under an old road bridge on the edge of a town center in Greater Manchester.
A team from Manchester University reported that the rivers flowing through Greater Manchester had the highest levels of micro-plastic contamination found anywhere in the world.
The image shows the urban environment in which the birds live. There is a shortage of natural perches for these semi-aquatic birds so they use whatever is available – in this case a shopping cart someone had thrown in the river.
Lockdown, Silver winner, category: Urban Birds.
The longer you spend observing the wildlife around you, the more you realize how many stories there are to tell.
Every morning, this Karoo Prinia would search for insects in the security gate of a front door. The insects drawn in by the outside light proved an easy meal for this clever bird.
Adaptation is the key to survival in an urban environment for humans and wildlife alike. The image is a striking symbol of the challenges we have faced with Covid-19 – a juxtaposition of fear and freedom.
Sprats and Bread, Gold winner, category: Creative Imagery.
“The concept for this picture came to me spontaneously when I was editing photographs of a Common Kingfisher,” the photographer said. “To create the image, I cut out a close-up of a kingfisher, then looked for a photogenic tin of fish and used the bread as a perch for the bird.”
Funnel, Silver winner, category: Creative Imagery.
Between November and March, tens of thousands of Common Starlings migrate to Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Potteric Carr Nature Reserve.
“My aim was to depict the fluid-like movement of a murmuration and capture its essence,” the photographer said. “I am interested in transient moments when chaos briefly changes to order. Here, I’ve captured the flock’s swirls, twists and turns, forming shapes like funnels and tornadoes as the birds seek a suitable spot in which to land.
