The overall winner of Bird Photographer of the Year 2021 was Mexican photographer Alejandro Prieto. His picture, titled “Blocked”, shows a greater roadrunner standing in front of the steel border wall between the United States and Mexico, photographed at Naco, Arizona. It beat more than 22,000 entries from around the world and earned Prieto the £5,000 grand prize along with the title.
The 2021 edition was the sixth year of the competition, which is run from the UK and judges images across eight main categories, plus awards for young photographers, a portfolio prize and a conservation award. Part of the money raised goes to bird conservation: in 2021 the organisers gave more than £8,000 to their partner charity, Birds on the Brink.
Below you will find who won each category, what the main pictures show, and what a contest like this says about birds and the places they live.
“Blocked”: the roadrunner at the border wall
At first glance the winning image is a simple scene. A greater roadrunner, the long-tailed ground cuckoo of the American Southwest and northern Mexico, faces a tall barrier topped with wire. The bird is small, the wall is huge, and there is no way around it in the frame.
That contrast is the point. Roadrunners hunt lizards, insects and small snakes on foot and fly only in short bursts, so a solid wall across desert scrub is a real obstacle for them. Prieto, who photographs wildlife along the border, has argued that the area is far from empty desert. In his words, the wall “crosses deserts, mountains, and even mangroves.” He has also said that he has seen many animals walk up to the barrier and turn back.
The image took gold in the Birds in the Environment category before being named the overall winner. Competition director Will Nicholls said it “immediately caught the attention of the judges”, a fair description of a picture that tells a whole story without needing a caption.
How Bird Photographer of the Year works
The contest is open to amateur and professional photographers anywhere in the world, and the judges pick gold, silver and bronze images in each category. The 2021 categories were:
- Best Portrait
- Birds in the Environment
- Attention to Detail
- Bird Behaviour
- Birds in Flight
- Black and White
- Urban Birds
- Creative Imagery
On top of these there are age-group awards (8 and under, 9 to 13, and 14 to 17), a Best Portfolio award for a series of images, and a Conservation Award for a project that helps a threatened species. The overall winner is chosen from the category gold medallists.
The 2021 winners, category by category
The posts embedded in this section were shared by the competition’s official Instagram account in the days after the results were announced. Each post names the photographer and the bird in its own caption; the notes between them summarise the winners of every category.
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Best Portrait
Gold went to Felipe Foncueva of Spain for “Underwater Portrait”, a view of a brown pelican from below the surface off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, near the mouth of the Tárcoles River. Seen from underwater, the stretched pouch looks surprisingly like the throat of a baleen whale. Silver went to Maofeng Shen of China for two calling demoiselle cranes in Inner Mongolia, and bronze to Jonas Classon of Sweden.
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Birds in the Environment
Prieto’s roadrunner won gold here before taking the top title. Silver went to Joshua Galicki of the United States for “Claiming the Forest Floor”, and bronze to Barbara Fleming, also of the US, for a yellow-billed oxpecker riding on a Cape buffalo, a classic example of birds and mammals living side by side.
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Attention to Detail
Spanish photographer Rafael Armada won with “Disappearing”, in which a king penguin stands beside its own reflection as a wave slowly washes it away across the wet sand. Raymond Hennessy (USA) took silver and Kerry Wu (USA) bronze with “Blue Flames”.
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Bird Behaviour
Mousam Ray of India won with “Floral Bathtub”: a female crimson sunbird bathing upside down in water caught in the petal of an ornamental banana flower at sunset. It was taken at North Bengal Agricultural University in Cooch Behar, West Bengal. Massimiliano Apollo (Italy) and Julie Halliday (Falkland Islands) took silver and bronze.
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Birds in Flight
Israeli photographer Tzahi Finkelstein won with “Thirsty”, a common swift skimming the water to drink in mid-flight. He reportedly spent three weeks sitting in a wetsuit under a floating hide and got the shot on the last day. Nicolas Reusens of Spain took silver with a hummingbird in Ecuador lit by two sets of flashes in a single long exposure.
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Black and White
Gold went to Renato Granieri (UK) for a lone chinstrap penguin standing on a giant Antarctic iceberg, framed wide so the bird looks tiny against the ice. James Rogerson (UK) took silver with a backlit northern gannet preening at sunrise, and Nathalie Chanteau (France) bronze.
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Urban Birds
Terry Whittaker (UK) won with white-throated dippers that nest under an old road bridge in Greater Manchester and use a dumped shopping trolley in the river as a perch. A remote camera placed in the water captured the scene. William Steel of South Africa took silver with a Karoo prinia picking insects off a lit security gate during the 2020 lockdown.
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Creative Imagery
Gold went to Ruediger Schulz of Germany for “Sprats and Bread”. Kathryn Cooper (UK) won silver with “Funnel”, a starling murmuration over Potteric Carr Nature Reserve, built by merging consecutive frames with her own code rather than using one long exposure. Ruth Hughes (UK) took bronze.
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Conservation Award
American photographer Carla Rhodes won for her project on the endangered greater adjutant, a giant stork. Her images show the birds standing on mounds of rubbish at the Boragaon landfill near Guwahati in Assam, India, a site that has spread into the Deepor Beel wetland. It is an uncomfortable picture of how a rare species survives in a human-made landscape.
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Young Bird Photographer of the Year
Seventeen-year-old Levi Fitze of Switzerland won the youth title with “Morning Lek”, male black grouse displaying at dawn in the Swiss Alps. He waited under a camouflage net for the sun to rise over the courtship ground, known as a lek. Daniel Martínez (Spain) and Daniel Zhang (UK) placed second and third in the 14 to 17 group.
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Younger age groups
In the 9 to 13 group, Andrés L. Domínguez Blanco of Spain won with a Eurasian nuthatch climbing down a Portuguese oak to drink, shot from an unusual low angle with a wide lens and remote trigger. In the 8 and under group, gold went to Deeksha Sambath of India for “I See You”.
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Best Portfolio
Kevin Morgans (UK) won the portfolio award with a series built around Atlantic puffins, including a puffin looking away from the camera against a low sun and a backlit bird with glowing, almost translucent wings. A portfolio prize rewards consistency: several strong pictures with a shared style and subject.
What makes a bird photograph stand out
Looking across the 2021 winners, a few patterns are easy to spot, and they are useful for anyone who photographs birds in a garden or local park.
- Story beats sharpness alone. The roadrunner, the dippers on the trolley and the storks on the landfill all show a bird in relation to people. Technically perfect portraits are common; pictures that say something are rare.
- Patience is part of the method. Several winners describe weeks in hides, wetsuits or under nets. Learning one site well usually works better than chasing many.
- Light is a subject. Backlit gannets and puffins, sunset sunbirds and dawn grouse all use low sun to separate the bird from its background.
- Unusual viewpoints help. Underwater, ground level and very wide framing turn familiar species into new images.
- The bird comes first. Good wildlife photographers keep their distance from nests and displaying birds and use long lenses or remote cameras instead of getting close.
Why a bird contest talks about walls and landfills
It is no accident that the top picture of 2021 is about a barrier. The competition presents itself as a celebration of birds and as a way to raise money and attention for their protection, which is why it donates to Birds on the Brink, a charity that funds small, grassroots conservation projects.
Prieto’s image and Rhodes’s landfill storks make the same point from two continents: birds do not live in a separate, untouched world. They live along fences, roads, rubbish tips and city rivers. Photographs like these help people see that everyday human decisions, from where a wall goes to how waste is handled, shape whether species thrive or struggle.
Entries for the next edition opened on 30 September 2021, only weeks after these results were published.
Sources: Bird Photographer of the Year: 2021 winners; My Modern Met: Bird Photographer of the Year 2021; Digital Camera World, September 2021; Birds on the Brink. Photographs © the individual photographers, shared via @birdpoty.
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