Henley Spiers Wins Bird Photographer of the Year 2026 With Northern Gannet Dive
British photographer Henley Spiers won the Bird Photographer of the Year 2026 competition with an image of a northern gannet plunging into the sea, titled Sunball Rocket. The image, captured in Shetland, Scotland, earned a Gold Award in the Birds in the Environment category before taking the overall title. Northern gannets reach speeds of up to 86km/h when diving, relying on streamlined bodies to absorb the impact.
Category Winners Capture Global Avian Behavior and Conservation
The international competition drew more than 24,000 entries across eight adult categories, celebrating avian biology while supporting the charity partner Birds on the Brink. Donald Chin secured a Gold Award in the Bird Behaviour category for I’m Keeping Everyone Dry, which shows a fledgling tawny frogmouth stretching its wings in the rain in Perth, Australia. In the Urban Birds category, Gianluca Damiani won a Gold Award for Alter Ego, depicting a yellow-legged gull perched on a Rome rooftop where residents feed urban wildlife with dry pet food.
Kent Stuart captured a great blue heron with discarded fishing line and a bobber tangled around its beak in Warren County, New Jersey, winning a Gold Award in the Conservation category for Not a Good Day Fishing. In the same category, Luca Eberle received a Bronze Award for Discarded Evidence, showing a BirdLife Malta officer examining a discarded stuffed Egyptian vulture near an informal landfill in Malta, where illegal hunting remains a threat to migratory species.
Portraits and Flight Images Highlight Technical Skill
Thomas Deliberto won a Gold Award in the Best Portrait category for Radiant, which shows a male greater sage-grouse displaying its tail feathers against a shadowed Utah hillside at sunrise. Volker Widmann earned a Silver Award in the same category for Sunset Puffin, capturing an Atlantic puffin silhouetted on Skomer Island in the United Kingdom. David Stowe secured a Bronze Award in the Best Portrait category for Tiny Dancer, documenting a male western parotia performing a courtship dance in the rainforest of Mingre, West Papua, Indonesia.
In the Birds in Flight category, Ivan Sjögren received a Gold Award for Eye-to-Eye with a Short-Eared Owl, taken at dusk in British Columbia’s Fraser River Delta. Patryk Kurc won a Bronze Award in the same category for Lord of the Reedbeds, which shows a Eurasian bittern flying over reedbeds during sunrise in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland. Mark Carwardine took a Silver Award in the Bird Behaviour category for Spread Eagle, featuring a juvenile bald eagle enduring relentless rain in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest.
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