Established in 2016, Bird Photographer of the Year was founded to promote birds and conservation through images. They are partnered with the charity Birds on the Brink, to whom they provide vital funding. This funding supports grass-roots conservation projects for birds around the world. Birdpoty images, books, and exhibitions all have a conservation thread woven carefully through the images, showcasing important messages to the viewing public. 

Bored Panda got in touch with an assistant manager at Birdpoty and nature photographer, Audrey Granger, to get to know more about this year's competition. She revealed that they have seen a great range of creativity from photographers, with exciting variations in lens choices, styles, and subjects. "This makes for a broad and varied exhibition."

The 2022 competition's judges included Mark Carwardine, Sergey Gorshkov, Li Ying Lou, David Lindo, Melissa Groo, Erin Ranney, Andrew Cleave, Paul Sterry, Myles Archibald, Will Nicholls, Majed Al Za’abi, Denise Ippolito, Tin Man Lee, Alejandro Prieto, Rathika Ramasamy, Jamie McPherson, and Hans Ngoteya. The full list of judges for the 2023 competition can be found here.

According to Audrey, the judges looked for technical excellence, images that have interesting compositional elements, and images that remain true to what the photographer saw when taking their photos. They were also looking for unique images that tell a strong story, or show birds in a new and perhaps unseen way.

The overall Winner of the Bird Photographer of the Year 2022 is "Rock Ptarmigan Flight" taken by Erlend Haarberg. His image also won Gold Award in the Birds in the Environment category. Haarberg wins the top prize of £5,000 and the prestigious title.