Our Favorite Fascinating Bird Behaviors From the 2025 Audubon Photo Awards

The lives of untamed birds are remarkably complicated and intriguing. As they go about discovering meals, attracting mates, elevating younger, evading predators, and typically migrating throughout continents, every type reveals off its personal distinctive galaxy of behaviors. A scientist who begins to review one chicken species could discover, time after time, that each new discovery results in extra questions. And for many who take pleasure in watching all birds, the fascinations are infinite.

Some avian behaviors are fleeting, over instantly, however expert photographers captured many such actions for this 12 months’s Audubon Pictures Awards. Take a look at these examples, after which in the event you haven’t but, remember to see the winners of the picture awards for 2025, together with the honorable mentions and our annual gallery of Top 100 images.  And if you find yourself feeling impressed by this superb photos, the 2026 Audubon Pictures Awards at the moment are open for entry. 

Thanks For All of the Fish (above)

Seabirds that eat fish get hold of them in varied methods. Brown Pelicans plunge-dive from the air into the water, scoop up a giant pouchful of water containing a couple of fish, then drain the water out the facet of the invoice earlier than swallowing the fish. Brown Noddies, sleek tropical terns, normally fly low over the water, swooping right down to delicately choose up prey on the water’s floor. However within the Galapagos, noddies have realized a neater tactic: Keep shut and snatch up any fish that escape whereas the massive birds are draining water from their invoice pouches. The noddies have a cushty place to sit down whereas they wait, and the pelicans don’t appear to thoughts. 

I Bought You One thing 

Most Mourning Dove nests look woefully flimsy—as in the event that they had been informal affairs, carelessly thrown collectively. However in reality, a mated pair works collectively to construct this humble construction, utilizing an environment friendly system. As soon as a basis of some twigs has been laid, the feminine settles down within the middle of it whereas the male flies off to seek out extra supplies. When he returns with one other twig or rootlet or vine tendril, typically he stands on the feminine’s again whereas presenting it to her. The feminine takes his new discover and works it into the rising nest. Regardless of their slapdash nests and their behavior of elevating solely two younger per brood, Mourning Doves are amongst our most plentiful birds. 

Starling Wars

For birds that nest in holes in timber, housing shortages loom as potential threats. Members of the woodpecker household, just like the Northern Flicker, can excavate their very own holes. However that’s no assure of a secure house, as a result of different cavity-nesting birds could attempt to steal these spots. For the sparkle, a frequent offender is the European Starling. This invasive non-native chicken might be very aggressive, typically succeeding in driving a flicker pair away from a newly accomplished nest cavity. Some researchers have discovered that starlings took over greater than 60 p.c of the sparkle nests inside a examine space. The glints can dig new holes for themselves, in fact, however the delay could trigger them to lift fewer younger. 

Me First! 

Widespread in open habitats in South America, the little Picui Floor Dove additionally adapts readily to cities and cities. Like different pigeons and doves, adults of this species feed their younger with “crop milk,” a thick, protein-rich secretion from the liner of the higher a part of their alimentary tract. When simply hatched, the nestling doves obtain this fluid in pure type; as they develop, it contains an rising proportion of seeds. The dad and mom proceed to feed them this fashion for a number of days after they go away the nest. On this picture, two just lately fledged Picui Floor Doves are insistently vying for consideration (and feeding) from the beleaguered grownup within the middle. 

Follow Prey

For any chicken of prey, the primary few months of life might be difficult. It takes time to grasp the talents wanted to seize dwelling, shifting prey, and the younger predators could typically go hungry through the studying interval. Younger Purple-tailed Hawks proceed to get nearly all their meals from their dad and mom for not less than 4 weeks after they go away the nest, and it could be six to seven weeks earlier than they’ve notable success in catching their very own prey—principally rodents and different small creatures. Within the meantime, they hone their strikes by diving on sticks, rocks, and different objects. This younger Purple-tail isn’t going to eat this apple, however selecting it up and carrying it gives invaluable apply.

Sensible Payments 

Puffins are most well-known for his or her giant, colourful payments. These massive honkers have their sensible facet: When an grownup Tufted Puffin is flying again to feed its single younger within the nest burrow, it could actually carry a number of small fishes per bill-load, often greater than 20 at a time. However the measurement and colours of the invoice additionally operate as ornament for the mating season. The invoice seems to be smaller and darker through the winter, as a result of some colourful outer sheaths are shed in fall, rising again in spring. These two adults, carrying their summer season finest, are engaged in a courtship habits known as billing (appropriately sufficient), during which the female and male face one another and rub their payments collectively repeatedly.
 

Tradition Conflict 

Sanderlings lead a double life. Their breeding vary spans the intense north, nearly completely above the Arctic Circle. However earlier than summer season’s finish, these pale little sandpipers forsake the tundra and head south to spend a lot of the 12 months alongside sandy seashores all around the world. On the central coast of Chile, this Sanderling had simply caught some alternative invertebrate when it additionally caught the eye of a younger Brown-hooded Gull. Like many gulls, this species of southern South America is adaptable and opportunistic in its feeding habits, recurrently chasing different birds to steal their meals. On this case, the photographer stories that the Sanderling managed to flee with its prize.

 Restricted Actual Property  

Geese and woodpeckers are two chicken teams that may appear unlikely to come back in battle. However for the Acorn Woodpecker and Wooden Duck, in sure conditions, clashes are nearly inevitable. Colonies of Acorn Woodpeckers harvest acorns by the tons of, stashing them in tiny holes drilled in useless wooden, and fiercely defend these shops towards all potential thieves. Wooden Geese aren’t agile sufficient to raid these arboreal larders, however they go to the treetops for a special purpose: Not like different geese, they place their nests in tree cavities, normally far above the bottom. This pair, searching for a web site for his or her subsequent nest, occurred to land close to one of many Acorn Woodpeckers’ treasured meals shops, drawing an instantaneous response from the homeowners. 

Gotta Be In Right here Someplace

The rail household encompasses two very various kinds of water birds: typical rails, which run round in marshes like slender chickens, and coots, normally seen swimming and appearing very very similar to geese. The Frequent Gallinule is someplace in between— extra aquatic than rails, extra terrestrial than coots. The gallinule within the picture has its head buried within the stump of a California fan palm, and it’s troublesome to say precisely what it’s doing. It might need been searching for meals (the species has a diversified weight loss program together with seeds, snails, and bugs), however because the photographer recommended, it additionally may have been testing a doable nest web site. Often, gallinules nest atop stumps or different raised objects. 

Get Off My Garden 

Till a couple of a long time in the past, the vireo household and the American warbler household had been regarded as shut kinfolk, with warblers coming instantly after vireos on the official checklists. Newer genetic research have proven they aren’t carefully associated in any respect. Their superficial similarities mirror their related existence, as small songbirds that recurrently glean tiny bugs from foliage. This aggressive Warbling Vireo is likely to be reacting to some instinctive sense that the Yellow Warbler is a possible rival for meals. An easier and extra seemingly clarification is that many wild birds are simply naturally feisty, typically chasing or harassing one another for no specific purpose.

Unusual Birdfellows 

Crested Caracaras and Turkey Vultures are completely unrelated, and so they look it, however they’re typically discovered collectively. Caracaras are odd members of the falcon household, feeding on all kinds of small, slow-moving prey, however a serious merchandise on their menu is carrion—the identical useless animals relished by vultures. From Florida and the Southwest south by the American tropics, wherever vultures have gathered at carrion, a Crested Caracara is more likely to be part of them. As a extra aggressive chicken, the caracara can dominate a couple of vultures and push them away; if there are too many to dominate, it slips in and feeds quietly amongst them, profiting from the vultures’ better potential to tear open robust carcasses. 

Conflict of Titans

Bald Eagles are absolutely able to being mighty hunters. A lot of the time, nevertheless, they act as scavengers, feasting on carrion or useless fish, placing their warrior instincts to work by combating over scraps with different eagles. On this picture, two eagles conflict over an elk carcass in Montana. The darker chicken, a juvenile Bald Eagle lower than one 12 months previous, seems to be displacing a white-headed grownup, suggesting that age is not any benefit in such an encounter. Feminine eagles are bigger than males, and this can be a younger feminine pushing an grownup male. In the meantime, a Black-billed Magpie, slipping in to steal some morsels, correctly chooses to get out of the way in which. 

Can’t Contact This 

Though males of a number of North American hummingbirds put on stable iridescent colours on the throat, solely the smallest species has a sample of stripes there. The magenta stripes of the male Calliope Hummingbird look mildly ornamental more often than not, however they play a giant position in courtship. Like many bigger hummers, the male Calliope performs aerial shows in breeding season, together with hovering and diving, partly to drive away rival males. When performing for a feminine, although, he hovers in entrance of her with a loud buzzing hum, splaying his throat stripes out to the fullest. If she’s sufficiently impressed, the 2 will mate. Then she goes off to construct a nest and lift younger, whereas he goes searching for one other fling. 

Tender Moments 

Black Vultures could have spooky reputations, however they’re truly clever, gregarious creatures with robust social bonds. When at relaxation, they spend a lot time preening and cleansing their feathers—or preening one another. This twin exercise, known as allopreening, could contain members of a mated pair, or dad or mum and offspring, or siblings from the identical brood. Every chicken concentrates on the opposite’s head and neck, areas that the person can’t attain for itself. These two Black Vultures had been perched on a metropolis rooftop in Colombia on a quiet morning, fastidiously tending to one another. The higher vulture has momentarily closed its nictitating membrane, the translucent “third eyelid” that helps to guard a chicken’s eyes.