Bird Photography Is Having a Moment — From Bluesky Feeds to the World's Biggest Bird Photo Awards

By Sarah Collins | November 12, 2026

Bird photography is trending on Bluesky today, with 202 posts in the topic, and the reason is easy to see. Scroll through the feed and you will find cardinals in autumn berries, blue jays against fall leaves, nuthatches, dunnocks, puffins, and eagles soaring over a city greenbelt. It is not one viral image driving the conversation. It is a whole community, posting every day, and a season of major photography awards landing at the same time.

The heart of that community on Bluesky is a daily ritual called #BirdOfTheDay. Each morning, a host sets a theme, and photographers answer with their own shots. On November 2, the themes were #GoldenSun, for any bird in warm, golden sunshine, and #FemmeFatale, for any female bird. Photographers replied with a juvenile woodchat shrike in the sun, a female goldeneye, a great egret among Canadian geese, and a northern harrier in golden light. A week later, on November 9, the theme was #ButtShots, for any bird showing its rear end, with #ColourfulBirds, for birds with more than three colours in their plumage, as the alternative. The joke is part of the point. The daily prompt gives photographers a reason to look through old files, share something they might otherwise keep to themselves, and talk to each other about it.

The hashtags #BirdsOfBluesky, #BirdPhotography, and #BirdsSeenIn2026 tie the daily posts together, so a reader can follow the whole season at a glance.

That everyday sharing sits alongside a very different scale of bird photography: the international competitions that announce their winners in the autumn. The biggest of them, Bird Photographer of the Year, revealed its 2026 winners after more than 24,000 images were entered. The overall winner, and Bird Photographer of the Year 2026, is Henley Spiers of the United Kingdom, for an image called "Sunball Rocket." It shows a northern gannet bursting through the surface of the ocean, and it also won the Gold Award in the Birds in the Environment category. Spiers received the top prize of 3,000 pounds and the title itself.

The young winner is just as striking. Parham Pourahmad, a 16-year-old from the United States, was named Young Bird Photographer of the Year 2026 for "Moonlit Night," an image of a great horned owl framed against a full moon. Other category winners included Thomas Deliberto, who won Gold for Best Portrait, and Donald Chin, who won Gold in the Bird Behaviour category for a photograph of three tawny frogmouths sheltering together on a branch in the rain. The competition also raised more than 5,000 pounds, about 6,600 dollars, for Birds on the Brink, a charity that funds grassroots bird conservation projects.

There is a clear thread running through all of this, from a daily Bluesky prompt to a 24,000-entry competition. Bird photography rewards patience more than equipment. A blue jay gathering acorns, a redwing eating a worm, and a gannet breaking the surface are all moments that last a second, and the photographer has to be ready for them. November helps, too. Autumn light is low and warm, leaves are turning, and many birds are on the move, gathering food and heading south for winter.

For readers who want to join in, the barrier is low. The #BirdOfTheDay themes are open to anyone, and the community regularly welcomes first-time posters. You do not need a rare species or a distant trip. A cardinal in the backyard, a gull on a beach, or a robin in a local park is enough, if the light and the moment are right.

Sources: Bluesky #BirdOfTheDay posts, November 2026; Bird Photographer of the Year 2026 winners, birdpoty.com; Popular Science, 2026 Bird Photographer of the Year winners.