Our Favorite Fascinating Bird Behaviors From the 2025 Audubon Photo Awards

The lives of wild birds are remarkably complex and intriguing. As they go about finding food, attracting mates, raising young, evading predators, and sometimes migrating across continents, each kind shows off its own unique galaxy of behaviors. A scientist who begins to study one bird species may find, time after time, that every new discovery leads to more questions. And for those who enjoy watching all birds, the fascinations are endless.

Some avian behaviors are fleeting, over in an instant, but skilled photographers captured many such actions for this year’s Audubon Photography Awards. Check out these examples, and then if you haven’t yet, be sure to see the winners of the photo awards for 2025, along with the honorable mentions and our annual gallery of Top 100 images.  And if you end up feeling inspired by this amazing images, the 2026 Audubon Photography Awards are now open for entry. 

Thanks For All the Fish (above)

Seabirds that eat fish obtain them in various ways. Brown Pelicans plunge-dive from the air into the water, scoop up a big pouchful of water containing a few fish, then drain the water out the side of the bill before swallowing the fish. Brown Noddies, graceful tropical terns, usually fly low over the water, swooping down to delicately pick up prey at the water’s surface. But in the Galapagos, noddies have learned an easier tactic: Stay close and snatch up any fish that escape while the big birds are draining water from their bill pouches. The noddies have a comfortable place to sit while they wait, and the pelicans don’t seem to mind. 

I Got You Something 

Most Mourning Dove nests look woefully flimsy—as if they were casual affairs, carelessly thrown together. But in fact, a mated pair works together to build this humble structure, using an efficient system. Once a foundation of a few twigs has been laid, the female settles down in the center of it while the male flies off to find more materials. When he returns with another twig or rootlet or vine tendril, often he stands on the female’s back while presenting it to her. The female takes his new find and works it into the growing nest. Despite their slapdash nests and their habit of raising only two young per brood, Mourning Doves are among our most abundant birds. 

Starling Wars

For birds that nest in holes in trees, housing shortages loom as potential threats. Members of the woodpecker family, like the Northern Flicker, can excavate their own holes. But that is no guarantee of a safe space, because other cavity-nesting birds may try to steal these spots. For the flicker, a frequent culprit is the European Starling. This invasive non-native bird can be very aggressive, often succeeding in driving a flicker pair away from a newly completed nest cavity. Some researchers have found that starlings took over more than 60 percent of the flicker nests within a study area. The flickers can dig new holes for themselves, of course, but the delay may cause them to raise fewer young. 

Me First! 

Widespread in open habitats in South America, the little Picui Ground Dove also adapts readily to towns and cities. Like other pigeons and doves, adults of this species feed their young with “crop milk,” a thick, protein-rich secretion from the lining of the upper part of their alimentary tract. When just hatched, the nestling doves receive this fluid in pure form; as they grow, it includes an increasing proportion of seeds. The parents continue to feed them this way for several days after they leave the nest. In this image, two recently fledged Picui Ground Doves are insistently vying for attention (and feeding) from the beleaguered adult in the center. 

Practice Prey

For any bird of prey, the first few months of life can be challenging. It takes time to master the skills needed to capture living, moving prey, and the young predators may often go hungry during the learning period. Young Red-tailed Hawks continue to get almost all their food from their parents for at least four weeks after they leave the nest, and it may be six to seven weeks before they have notable success in catching their own prey—mostly rodents and other small creatures. In the meantime, they hone their moves by diving on sticks, rocks, and other objects. This young Red-tail isn’t going to eat this apple, but picking it up and carrying it provides valuable practice.

Brilliant Bills 

Puffins are most famous for their large, colorful bills. These big honkers have their practical side: When an adult Tufted Puffin is flying back to feed its single young in the nest burrow, it can carry multiple small fishes per bill-load, occasionally more than 20 at a time. But the size and colors of the bill also function as decoration for the mating season. The bill looks smaller and darker during the winter, because some colorful outer sheaths are shed in fall, growing back in spring. These two adults, wearing their summer best, are engaged in a courtship behavior called billing (appropriately enough), in which the male and female face each other and rub their bills together repeatedly.
 

Culture Clash 

Sanderlings lead a double life. Their breeding range spans the extreme north, almost entirely above the Arctic Circle. But before summer’s end, these pale little sandpipers forsake the tundra and head south to spend most of the year along sandy beaches all over the world. On the central coast of Chile, this Sanderling had just caught some choice invertebrate when it also caught the attention of a young Brown-hooded Gull. Like many gulls, this species of southern South America is adaptable and opportunistic in its feeding habits, regularly chasing other birds to steal their meals. In this case, the photographer reports that the Sanderling managed to escape with its prize.

 Limited Real Estate  

Ducks and woodpeckers are two bird groups that might seem unlikely to come in conflict. But for the Acorn Woodpecker and Wood Duck, in certain situations, clashes are almost inevitable. Colonies of Acorn Woodpeckers harvest acorns by the hundreds, stashing them in tiny holes drilled in dead wood, and fiercely defend these stores against all potential thieves. Wood Ducks are not agile enough to raid these arboreal larders, but they visit the treetops for a different reason: Unlike other ducks, they place their nests in tree cavities, usually far above the ground. This pair, seeking a site for their next nest, happened to land near one of the Acorn Woodpeckers’ treasured food stores, drawing an immediate reaction from the owners. 

Gotta Be In Here Somewhere

The rail family encompasses two very different types of water birds: typical rails, which run around in marshes like slender chickens, and coots, usually seen swimming and acting very much like ducks. The Common Gallinule is somewhere in between— more aquatic than rails, more terrestrial than coots. The gallinule in the photo has its head buried in the stump of a California fan palm, and it’s difficult to say exactly what it’s doing. It might have been looking for food (the species has a varied diet including seeds, snails, and insects), but as the photographer suggested, it also could have been checking out a possible nest site. Occasionally, gallinules nest atop stumps or other raised objects. 

Get Off My Lawn 

Until a few decades ago, the vireo family and the American warbler family were thought to be close relatives, with warblers coming immediately after vireos on the official checklists. More recent genetic studies have shown they are not closely related at all. Their superficial similarities reflect their similar lifestyles, as small songbirds that regularly glean tiny insects from foliage. This aggressive Warbling Vireo might be reacting to some instinctive sense that the Yellow Warbler is a potential rival for food. A simpler and more likely explanation is that many wild birds are just naturally feisty, sometimes chasing or harassing each other for no particular reason.

Strange Birdfellows 

Crested Caracaras and Turkey Vultures are utterly unrelated, and they look it, but they are often found together. Caracaras are odd members of the falcon family, feeding on a wide variety of small, slow-moving prey, but a major item on their menu is carrion—the same dead animals relished by vultures. From Florida and the Southwest south through the American tropics, wherever vultures have gathered at carrion, a Crested Caracara is likely to join them. As a more aggressive bird, the caracara can dominate a few vultures and push them away; if there are too many to dominate, it slips in and feeds quietly among them, taking advantage of the vultures’ greater ability to rip open tough carcasses. 

Clash of Titans

Bald Eagles are fully capable of being mighty hunters. Much of the time, however, they act as scavengers, feasting on carrion or dead fish, putting their warrior instincts to work by fighting over scraps with other eagles. In this photo, two eagles clash over an elk carcass in Montana. The darker bird, a juvenile Bald Eagle less than one year old, appears to be displacing a white-headed adult, suggesting that age is no advantage in such an encounter. Female eagles are larger than males, and this may be a young female pushing an adult male. Meanwhile, a Black-billed Magpie, slipping in to steal some morsels, wisely chooses to get out of the way. 

Can’t Touch This 

Although males of several North American hummingbirds wear solid iridescent colors on the throat, only the smallest species has a pattern of stripes there. The magenta stripes of the male Calliope Hummingbird look mildly decorative most of the time, but they play a big role in courtship. Like many larger hummers, the male Calliope performs aerial displays in breeding season, including hovering and diving, partly to drive away rival males. When performing for a female, though, he hovers in front of her with a loud buzzing hum, splaying his throat stripes out to the fullest. If she’s sufficiently impressed, the two will mate. Then she goes off to build a nest and raise young, while he goes looking for another fling. 

Tender Moments 

Black Vultures may have spooky reputations, but they are actually intelligent, gregarious creatures with strong social bonds. When at rest, they spend much time preening and cleaning their feathers—or preening each other. This dual activity, called allopreening, may involve members of a mated pair, or parent and offspring, or siblings from the same brood. Each bird concentrates on the other’s head and neck, areas that the individual can’t reach for itself. These two Black Vultures were perched on a city rooftop in Colombia on a quiet morning, carefully tending to each other. The upper vulture has momentarily closed its nictitating membrane, the translucent “third eyelid” that helps to protect a bird’s eyes.