Twelve-year-old Ima Akagawa and her family had been keeping an eye on a red-tailed hawk family in Back of the Yards for months when she came across one of the birds outside its typical habitat.
ima, her parents and her younger brother, Ari, who are all avid bird-watchers, were going to check on a peregrine falcon family they monitor in McKinley Park when they spotted the familiar face.
“We were driving over a bridge … and the red tail was right on a lamppost,” she said.
Ima pulled out her dad’s old camera, which she has been learning to use for more than a year, and started snapping photos. In the background, Willis Tower stepped in as the perfect backdrop.
One of her photos would later garner first place honors in the urban aviary category of the Chicago Bird Photography Contest, put on by the Chicago Ornithological Society and the Chicago Bird Alliance.
“It was very surprising because it’s the male of a red-tailed hawk family that we watch in Back of the Yards, so it was fun to watch him closer than up on the post that they nest on which is very high up,” Ima said. “It was definitely cool to see him on the lamppost much closer to us, like eye level.”
The competition was split into five categories: Wetland wonders, urban aviary, seasonal spectacles, lakefront flyers and feathered flocks. Each category was meant to showcase how wildlife, birds in particular, live in Chicago and interact with the urban environment, said Edward Warden, president of the Chicago Ornithological Society.
“We didn’t want you to go out to some national park, we wanted you to be right here, in the city proper, capturing birds alongside people,” Warden said.
The competition, which was funded by the Chicago Park District, allowed the five judges, including Warden, to connect with the photographer in a unique way, Warden said.
“Seeing it through these people’s photography and what they wanted to show for this photo, it says something about how they were experiencing that moment, and that was really powerful to see,” he said.
The moment captured by Ima was special for the whole family. Not only was the photo taken on her mom’s birthday with the whole family together, but they had fostered a sort of relationship with the hawk in the photo by keeping an eye on it twice a week since the chicks were born in February.
“There’s just so much buildup to that particular moment,” said Gabriel Akagawa, Ima’s dad.
Ari Weil, a 28-year-old doctoral candidate in political science at University of Chicago, was another first-place winner. He also didn’t expect much by submitting his photos to the contest, but he was pleasantly surprised by the results. His photo of a blue-winged teal, a type of duck, drinking water in Washington Park won first place in the wetland wonders category.
Weil said “there wasn’t a huge story” behind the shot of the duck, but he finds meaning in combining his two hobbies of birding and photography.
“It gives me so much appreciation for all the green space that Chicago has,” said Weil, who lives in Hyde Park. “There’s so much that I didn’t realize before that we have all around us.”
Weil sees the bird photography contest as a way for people who aren’t so connected with Chicago wildlife to learn more about it.
“I thought this was a great idea because it celebrates all the different types of bird life we have in Chicago, I hope it’s great for our own birding community, but then the wider community of Chicago gets to see this wildlife that’s around us every day.”