Teen birder wins Audubon photography award

A young member of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society recently won national recognition for his photography.

Vayun Tiwari, 16, of Sunnyvale was named the Youth Winner of the National Audubon Society’s 2020 Photography Awards for a shot he took of a Northern Jacana, a marsh bird of the tropics, along the New River in Belize. Vayun is a member of the society’s local chapter, headquartered in McClellan Ranch Preserve in Cupertino.

Like many nature photographers, Tiwari got his shot with a combination of luck and skill.

“On a boat ride on the New River, I noticed a few Northern Jacanas on a patch of water lilies and asked the captain to stop,” he recalls. “I hoped our vessel wouldn’t scare away the birds. I couldn’t believe my luck when one walked closer and closer to us. The boat was rocking, but when the bird stopped for a moment to peer into a water lily, I was able to set up and get this special shot.”

Vayun’s photo will be featured along with the other contest winners in future issues of “Audubon” magazine and “Nature’s Best Photography” magazine. As youth winner, he received a six-day session at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine during the 2021 season.

Vayun first tried bird photography at age 7 on a family trip to the Everglades. A junior at the Harker School, Vayun has used his bird photography to raise money for the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society and the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. He has presented several talks about birds and bird photography and, on Oct. 7, will give an online presentation about birds in southern Ecuador to the Bay Area Bird Photographers. For more information, visit https:// bit.ly/2GSitgZ

To view a photo gallery of Vayun’s work, visit https://scvas.org/ vayun-tiwari-gallery. Visit https://www.audubon.org/magazine/summer-2020 to see all of the winning photographs in the contest.