My beautiful oldest daughter will graduate from UNC this weekend. She allowed me the privilege of taking senior photos of her and 3 of her beautiful friends. I may be posting some of them. I took over 800 (sheesh) My hard disk let me know it was not happy when I loaded them so I was forced to archive many of my hummingbird pics. So I had to go through a lot of them and I’ll be posting some of them for a few weeks. This is called a Cigar plant.
It’s not just the wings that move fast. When the wings go down (top right photo) you can see the back arch slightly. When the wings go back up they stretch back out and you get that classic hummingbird photo.
I am still waiting for the other flowers I’ve planted to bloom but in the meantime purple is the theme. If you click on the bottom right picture you can see the pollen on his beak close to his face.
When I shoot hummingbirds I frequently “spray and pray”. That’s how I caught this sequence of movements. Looks like she was thinking about taking off from her perch but changed her mind. The first shot in the third row? I didn’t even know their wings did that….
It can be difficult to determine the gender of a hummingbird. I mean there are 58 options on Facebook (LOL).
Ruby throated are usually easy if you get the right shot with the right light on the throat. However if you get a good enough shot of the wings you can tell whether it’s a male or female by the tapering of the sixth feather. It’s rounded for females and more tapered for males which you can see in the first and last shot. The top right shot shows pollen on the nose of this guy.
It’s early days in Hummingbird Season but I’m not gonna lie, I’m always super sad when a day goes by after the first day I see one (April 1st) and I fail to see one. We all have our psychoses to live with, right? (My husband agrees if you thought “Yes you sure do you weirdo.”)
So interesting that the brilliant red throats can appear orange, black or gray depending on the light. Here’s a very science-y article explaining how the reflection and refraction of light waves make the feathers appear to change color https://birdwatchingbuzz.com/do-hummingbirds-change-color/
You can barely see the tip of his tongue in the first and last picture but it’s constantly going in and out.
If you look sequentially through the pictures you’ll see this guy’s eyes blinking: open, shut, open, shut.
Super happy that I ordered flowers early. My perennials will eventually bloom but later in the season. Now I’ve got blooming flowers in mid April. This is a very purple salvia called Black and Blue.
Saw a hummingbird but didn’t get a photo, so I’m posting these from last summer. Interesting that I always see the birds when I’m talking to my good friend Marsha on the phone. Marsha is my good luck charm!
As soon as I get a sunny day it’ll be time to grab the big camera, get a good audible book and wait for a good shot. Then spray and pray 🙂
