The 2026 Audubon Photography Awards reward the kind of patience that rarely photographs well — long expeditions, repeat attempts, and the occasional stroke of luck. Francisco Castro Escobar took a grand prize for a lesser horned owl, known in Chile as ‘the ghost of the desert’ because sightings are so rare they feel like apparitions, caught on a cactus during a dawn hike in Antofagasta. The winning frames run from that sort of once-in-a-career encounter to quieter studies of common birds seen properly for once.
