The 2026 BirdLife Australia photography awards have announced their winners, with images ranging from king penguins gliding beneath the ocean surface to a crimson rosella stealing a sugar packet. Funds raised by the competition support bird conservation programs in Australia.
Overall winner: Kings Down Under
Lachlan Hall took the overall prize with a photograph of king penguins gliding underwater off Macquarie Island. Hall said he wanted to capture the birds where nature has designed them to be, flying through the ocean, swift and graceful, rather than on land where they appear awkward and clumsy. He took the image by holding his camera, in an underwater housing, over the side of a small inflatable boat.
Category winners and runners-up
Rachelle Mackintosh won the bird portrait category with “The Crown”, taken from her doorway as a cockatoo straightened up after a head shake, its comb standing up like a crown. Elmar Akhmetov won the bird behaviour category and was overall runner-up with “It takes two to tango”, documenting a superb lyrebird mating ritual, a scene rarely captured in photographs.
Mark Lethlean was runner-up in bird behaviour for “Crumbed Sausage”, showing a mature caspian tern chick camouflaged by sand after a weather event destroyed its colony’s nests. Kylie Facey won the human impact category with “The sugar thief”, capturing a crimson rosella tearing open a sugar packet at a cafe, a moment she described as both funny and unsettling, and a reminder of the harm caused by feeding wildlife.
Backyard birds, finches and youth winners
Mark Doro won the backyard birds category with “Gang tackle”, showing a female gang gang cockatoo playing with a park tap. Stephen Garth won the special theme category on Australian finches with “Bold”, an opportunistic shot of a male zebra finch at the Western Treatment Plant south-west of Melbourne. Micah Boyce won the youth category with “Master of Disguise”, a portrait of a tawny frogmouth perched at eye level.
Other commended images include Greg Wyncoll’s “Cormorant refuses to give up catch to pelican mafia”, Louie Owen’s “Mid Flight Glisten”, Sharon Jones’s “Is that for me?”, Reeni Martinez’s “Impasse” (bird portrait runner-up), Arlo Wallace’s “Bonding” (youth highly commended) and Emma Perry’s “Bin Turkey” (human impact highly commended).
