Bird photography award reveals winners of the 2025 edition
Professional and amateur photographers were awarded in eight categories, portraying curiosities, beauties and conservation initiatives
The international Bird Photographer of The Year competition announced the winning bird photographers of its 2025 edition, selected from more than 33 thousand photographs entered.
The overall winner of the competition was Liron Gertsman, from Canada, with the image “The frigate and the diamond ring” which depicts the silhouette of a frigate against a total solar eclipse. The photographer was also awarded in the Birds in Flight category.
Gertsman said he spent a year planning to capture this image. The video shows behind the scenes and the exact moment he made the record.
Meet the other winners of the 2025 Bird Photography Award
Divided into eight categories, the Bird Photographer of the Year competition, held by a British organization, aims to celebrate the beauty and diversity of the world’s birds, as well as raising funds for the Birds on the Brink institution.
Young Bird Photographers
The Young Photographer of the Year award was awarded to 16-year-old Pole Tomasz Michalski, who captured the silhouette of a vulture. Michalski also won in the 15 to 17 years old category.
Harry Sedin, from Sweden won in the 12 – 14 age category with the image ‘Jewel of the Forest’ and also received the award for third place in the same category.
In the category for young photographers up to 11 years old, the winner was Sasha Jumanca, from Germany/Romania, with the image ‘Graceful flight over wild flowers’.
Best Series
Polish photographer Mateusz Piesiak won the award for Best Series of the Year, with the sequence of images ‘Paradise of sunflowers’.
Due to abnormally high water levels, harvesting in a vast sunflower field could not be done, making the area a paradise for birds.
Filled with high-calorie seeds, the site has become a vital refuge for thousands of goldfinches. One of the images shows the flock of birds flying over the sunflower field covered in frost.
The photographer had an idea after this experience:
‘Could we intentionally leave similar fields untouched in different parts of Europe?”
“By making these images I hope to inspire people about the simple but powerful ways to restore biodiversity – sometimes you just need to let nature reclaim a space for a while,” he said.
Best Video
The British contest also awards videos, in addition to photographs.
A story titled ‘The Lord of the Skies’ was the category winner. Henry Kirkwood shows a sequence of flights of a hawk hunting a pigeon.
Best Portrait
Steffen Foerster, from Germany, was the photographer who best captured the characteristics of a bird portrayed in close-up, according to the judges of the bird photography contest.
The image ‘Blood Petrel’ highlights the red feathers of this seabird with a very strange beak shape.
Birds in the Environment
The relationship between a bird and its habitat was portrayed by Franco Banfi, from Switzerland, in the image ‘Partying at Sunset’.
Bird behavior
Italian photographer Francesco Guffanti was the winner of the Bird Behavior category with his portrait of an eagle perched on a log, titled ‘Angel or Demon’.
Black and White Category
‘The Giant’ depicts a bird flying in the foreground and a flock of birds in the background. The photo shows the effective use of the monochromatic style that highlights the bright sky with the dark birds in focus. The image was taken by Jannik Jansons, from Germany.
Urban Birds
Forced to live in the middle of the city, urban birds, like the one portrayed in the winning photograph in this competition category, land on a roof with solar panels.
The “Bird on Panels” image was captured by Alex Pansier from the Netherlands.
Creative Perspectives
Italian Philipp Egger won first place in this category of the bird photography award for his creativity with the image ‘Photographic art’, which highlights a blue bird next to a butterfly on a colorful background.
Conservation Category (Single Image)
‘X-raying’ was an image by Indian photographer Sarthak Agrawal, who depicts a bird with its wings held together with tape during an x-ray.
Conservation Award
Stories of conservation efforts or the struggle of a specific species are the highlights of this category of the competition.
Joshua Burch, from the United Kingdom, won the Conservation Award for the series of images ‘The ranger – loon’.
The Charleston Lake Association is in Canada and has monitored the area’s natural life for more than a century. The photographer has been involved in recent years with the loon nesting project and documented the work of conservationists engaged in the initiative.
Dwayne Struthers, Director of Fish and Wildlife, has been monitoring loons for at least fifteen years. The photographer says he suggested installing cameras on the loon nesting rafts.
With these cameras it was possible to see the nests up close without disturbing the bird that was incubating the eggs.
Director Struthers also planned to install a covering or coating made from the ‘hemlock plant’ (Hemlock), which is unappetizing to local beavers and muskrats.
The rafts gained a new design. Instead of using wood, Dwayne designed a nest using plastic pipes. This way the rafts would fit on the boat and could be installed more quickly – unlike wooden rafts, which had to be towed to the site.
Covered with dead grass and other natural materials, the bottom of the raft is out of sight of loons searching for food.
“At this point, we also installed the cameras just below the nest cover, which gave us a great view of the raft.
With all the rafts in place, it was a matter of waiting to see if the birds would approve of their new shelters, and they did.
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