These Precious Photos of Baby Birds Are Just What You Need

Parents tending to their offspring are some of the most endearing moments in nature, so it’s no wonder that photographers strive to capture these interactions. Last year, like any other year, the 2025 Audubon Photography Awards received an impressive collection of baby bird photos that had us awwing at our screens. From adorably awkward American Woodcock fluffballs to shy swallow chicks in Chile, the following 15 images are a stunning showcase of avian family life across the Americas. 

All of these photos were captured at a safe and responsible distance, and in doing so, these photos give us glimpses into moments  of fascinating natural history both far and close to home. Although the images didn’t win any of the competition’s main awards, they definitely won our hearts. Make sure to check out the 2025 awards winners, honorable mentions, and Top 100  for more dazzling displays. But in the meantime, get ready for a bombardment of cuteness.

Great Horned Owl (above)

Surrounded by spindly Spanish moss, an adult Great Horned Owl naps with its owlet. This species is North America’s most widespread owl and one of the first to start breeding—as early as late November in southern states like Florida, where Alex Nelson captured this image. In the winter, pairs of Great Horned Owls begin to hoot to one another, and the female spends more than a month incubating the eggs. Young leave the nest around five weeks after hatching, and will spend another five weeks screeching and clambering along tree branches until they can fly.

American Woodcock

Just like adults, baby American Woodcocks bob to the beat of their own drum as they walk across the forest floor. These downy chicks leave their nest within hours after hatching, and are fed by their mother for the first week of their life. After that, they forage on their own, bouncing along to stir up prey while probing their long little bills into the soil in search of earthworms and insects. In this photo, Andrew Tao captures a sweet moment between mother and baby, where she holds a wormy meal she snagged from the leaf litter in her beak.

Wood Stork

Wood Storks nest in bustling waterbird colonies at wetlands in Florida and the Southeast. At the start of the breeding season, these birds use large sticks to construct flimsy nests in mangrove trees or cypress, and will delicately line the inside with leaves. Within the nest, storks will lay around three to four eggs, with five, as pictured, being the maximum clutch size. As the season goes on, new sticks may be added to the nest, and it will certainly become covered in guano, which helps keep the structure together. Young storks are noisy and scraggly, and will fledge at around eight weeks old.

Baltimore Oriole

Although a lover of fruits and nectar, when it comes to feeding their chicks, adult Baltimore Orioles mostly rely on insects. Feeding these young birds beetles, moths, and grasshoppers snagged from the treetops gives them enough protein for them to grow. Although the female oriole is pictured here, both parents help raise the chicks. Young birds grow up in a hanging pouch-like nest, woven primarily by the female, and will leave the nest about two weeks after hatching.

Sandhill Crane

A Sandhill Crane chick is called a colt—an apt name since these birds are running and on their feet at a very young age, as photographed here by Tim Barker. Within a day after hatching, colts follow their parents into marshy areas, where both parents feed the young bird insects, seeds, or other bite-sized meals. Young cranes stick around their parents for9 to 10 months, eventually migrating with their family to their wintering grounds at the end of the breeding season.

Crested Caracara

Although they look like a hawk, caracaras are actually falcons. In fact, they are the only falcon that collects nesting material to construct their bulky abodes, relying  on sticks, stems, vines, and other vegetation to build a structure around two feet across in size. Once established, nests can be reused by pairs year after year, with the birds making repairs and adding nesting materials as necessary. This Crested Caracara family, photographed by Isabel Guerra Clark, seems to have made its home in a saguaro cactus, a keystone plant of the Sonoran Desert.

Chilean Swallow

A common sight in the more temperate reaches of Chile and Patagonia, the Chilean Swallow is a species that only breeds in southern South America. Like many swallows, they nest in cavities near water, either under the eaves of houses or in tree hollows, such as one housing the two fledglings pictured here. Inside the cavity, Chilean Swallow nests are made from mud and lined with feathers, where the female will lay a clutch of four to six eggs. A pair can raise two to three broods a season.

American Goldfinch

When it comes to American Goldfinch chicks, the male takes on the bulk of the work. He’s in charge of gathering food when the chicks first hatch, whereas the female hands over the food to the chicks. Over time, the male starts to give the chicks food directly, and when the birds are close to fledging, he is the primary caregiver. In this photo, Sarah McDaniel captures the male goldfinch feeding three nestlings in a prairie in Illinois.

American Oystercatcher

Fuzzy oystercatcher chicks are able to leave the nest within hours after they hatch. In the first two months of their lives, both of the parents will bring the young birds shellfish and worms and will loudly chase and harass predators. As they grow, the chicks will then start to probe on their own, foraging along the shorelines and using their tan coloration as camouflage against the sandy beach. In this photo, Matt Reitinger observed two chicks playing, chasing one other, and getting into chest-bumping tussles on a beach in New Jersey.

American Robin

When American Robins first hatch, they are blind, helpless, and covered in a few wisps of white downy feathers. But over the course of a short two weeks, these chicks undergo a dramatic transformation. Both parents work diligently to gather bundles of insects and earthworms, nourishing their babies so they can sprout new feathers, grow their wings, and strengthen their muscles. When they emerge from the nest, as this young robin pictured here has done, they are the same size as an adult and can tentatively fly and forage on their own.

Trumpeter Swan

The wetlands of Alaska, where Hiresha Senanayake snapped this family photo, hosts important refuges for the Trumpeter Swan. It’s where many swans, primarily ones from the Pacific coast, nest and breed, taking advantage of the lush landscape’s abundant food and safety from predators. A swan pair can have up to nine cygnets (baby swans), which can swim after they are one-day old. Family portraits like these used to be rare, as Trumpeter Swans were considered endangered in the mid-1900s after they underwent a precipitous decline. But thanks to hunting regulations and habitat protection, the species has made a miraculous rebound.

Roseate Spoonbill

A newly hatched Roseate Spoonbill may appear a little bit like a dinosaur. Its bill is long, thick, and vaguely spoonlike, and a layer of white downy feathers covers its pale pink skin. Like many baby birds, a spoonbills’ diet consists of regurgitated food, in this case of small fish and crustaceans that the adults scooped up from nearby waters. The chick will remain in the nest for about a month, until they climb onto nearby foliage and finally fledge at six weeks old.

California Quail

A clutch for a California Quail is usually around 13 to 14 eggs, and when they hatch, large groups of chicks can be seen following the adults around. During the morning and evening, quails spend much of their time on the ground, foraging for seeds and other grains. But when they need to rest, they roost in the safety of trees. For this photo, Robert Groos came across six two-week-old quail chicks getting comfortable on a fallen oak branch on his property.

Golden-plumed Parakeet

A long-tailed parrot found high in the Andes, the Golden-plumed Parakeet is typically nomadic, wandering the cloud forests in large, rowdy groups. However, once they start nesting, the parakeets will stick to one place for several months. These birds are cavity nesters, as seen in this photo taken by Santiago Palacios Salazar in Colombia, and have been noted to have an affinity for hollows in wax palm trees. Once the chicks hatch, both male and female parakeets care for their young, feeding them three to four times a day, and will shrilly call to one another when returning to the nest.

Laysan Albatross

Flying, for a Laysan Albatross chick, is tricky business. Before they fledge at around six months old, these birds can spend weeks vigorously flapping, running into the wind, and practicing little hops to master the lift of their large wings. Once aloft, it may be a long time before an albatross sees land again: Young albatrosses spend their first three or four years living at sea, only returning to their birth islands when they are ready to raise families of their own. The birds nest in just a few remote islands in the world, including on Kauai, Hawaii, which is where Alex Eisengart took this photo.