Scientists Win Nature Photo Contest With Bald Ibis Migration and Neon Mosquito Images

An ultralight aircraft guided 36 northern bald ibises across a 1,700-plus-mile route from southeastern Germany to southern Spain, and one photograph of that flight won the overall prize in the Scientist at Work competition. The northern bald ibis disappeared from Europe some 400 years ago due to overhunting.

Another population survived in Syria and Morocco, and scientists later brought birds to Europe to rear chicks in captivity and teach them the migratory path.

Gunnar Hartmann, an undergraduate at the University of Koblenz, joined the Waldrappteam project for 50 days in the fall of 2024. On a cool, rosemary-scented morning in the town of Jaén in Andalusia, he captured the winning image showing the aircraft beneath a yellow parachute with 19 ibises flying ahead over a golden landscape. "For me, this special morning was super emotional," Hartmann said.

The birds were tired after days of flying, and the team struggled to motivate them to follow the aircraft. Allen Tian, a PhD student at Queen's University in Ontario, won a prize for an overhead photograph of an algal bloom in Dog Lake. The image shows an undulating green mass with a single boat and his research assistant's shadow on the water.

Rob Harcourt, emeritus professor of marine ecology at Macquarie University, photographed a marine biologist sampling microbes on the skin of a wild whale shark off western Australia. "We leap into the blue when we find a marine giant," Harcourt said.

" Uli Kunz, a freelance marine biologist and photographer, captured two scientists examining a coral specimen inside a transparent incubation chamber on the sandy floor of the Red Sea off Saudi Arabia.