Snoozing Penguins and Urban Flamingos Win Bird Photographer of the Year Awards

A white rock ptarmigan launches itself off a rock high above the fjords of Norway in this stunning shot that took the overall prize.

A small dunlin faces off against the wind as it trudges across Heligoland, an island in the North Sea.

In the Western Ghats of India, a pluckish parakeet flits from one branch to another.

A Kentish plover in its flock stands alone on a beach in Thailand. The bird is perfectly framed by the reflection of the setting sun.

The eye of a common loon (also known by its way cooler name, the Great Northern Diver) covered in water droplets from a recent dive.

This happy couple is made up of two purple-crested turacos in South Africa. The intimate moment was caught by a birder while he was searcher for another interesting species, the African emerald cuckoo.

The colors of these bohemian waxwing are totally drowned out by the light behind the animal, leaving just its silhouette. The bird is chowing down on some berries.

A gorgeous turaco in flight. The photographer caught the fast-flying bird on a green background—an impressive feat.

A European shag flies over a large wave (about 26 feet high) off the coast of northern Spain.

If you squint, you can see the two swans on an icy lake. This image abstracts the swans’ environment, as the viewer is tempted to focus on the geometry of the icy lake rather than the birds.

Though this image looks impossibly timed, it’s actually a composite image taken of sandhill cranes and an airshow by the US Navy Blue Angels. Still, it makes for an amusing look at the animal kingdom.

This image of a young owl reminds us of how human waste becomes part of an animal’s landscape.

A barred owl peers out from behind a tree trunk in Acadia National Park, Maine.

An Anna’s hummingbird investigates water droplets coming off a fountain in Fremont, California.

A king penguin chick in its ‘teddy bear’ plumage, a star difference from the black and white of the adults. This particular chick is sleeping in the Falkland Islands.

A male sage grouse displaying its remarkable plumage. The grouse isn’t displaying for us, though, but for any female mate that will deign to take him.

In this photo, we see sage grouses grousing. Specifically, two males face off in a fight over females. With their remarkable plumage, the birds truly look like warriors.

Two galahs fly in front of a slightly washed-out mural in Queensland, Australia. The birds are pale pink, and complement their blue-green background.

A double-crested cormorant dives down towards a school of fish off the coast of Mexico. The bird—its wings tucked in—resembles a missile as it bombs down towards its target.

In this gold award winner for creative imagery, the photographer captures white storks on a background evidently inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night. “Ukrainians don’t traditionally give birds and animals human names,” the photographer stated in a release. “However, an exception is made with White Storks, which are addressed as if they were people.”

A string of flamingos fly over the skyline of Abu Dhabi. The buildings on the skyline poke out above low cloud cover.

This enigmatic shot of a Eurasian blackbird shows the animal on a mossy branch in Spain. The bird is silhouetted, giving it a certain mystique as it ponders its next move.

A young pied avocet pulls its beak out of the water in a Hungarian national park. Abstracted from the scale of larger things—like the water buffalo nearby—the bipedal animal perhaps looks the most dinosaur-like of any of the birds in this contest.

The eye of a Western Capercaillie seems to be accentuated by the blackness of the rest of the image. The animal’s tail feathers take up the majority of the image, with the eye just a sliver in the corner of the photo—yet the place to which the observer’s eye is drawn.

This photo of silhouetted puffins shows the birds in a humanizing light. They came together with the morning sun behind them, casting an intimate light on the moment.

Guillemots, or murres, are caught diving in a marine reserve off of Scotland in this image. The birds appear to be flying with their wings spread—its only the bubbles and the greenish tint of the water that give them away. Oh, and the jellyfish.

A starling approaches some sunflower seeds (out of frame). The animal’s head has a blur as it swoops in at speed.

Flocks of flamingos appear to be vapor-like dots on this image, taken from an aircraft. Behind the flamingos, Kenya’s Lake Logipi is awash in yellows and reds from algae in the lakebed.

A black-and-white image of a volcanic beach in Iceland. A cormorant—its wings spread—is beautifully framed by the large rocks.

A pelican prods at a dead fish with flamingos flying in the background. This image is also edited; the pelicans and flamingos were in Greece, and the boat was on the Norfolk coastline. The fish and lantern were photographed in the photographer’s garden, and they all came together to make this dreamlike image.

This little owl (Athene noctua) doesn’t appear too stoked about the heavy rain that recently fell in its habitat of Transylvania.