POTD: Hummer #2

Hummer #2
Oro Valley, Arizona
2023

At one point I thought I might try to identify the different species of hummingbirds that were visiting our feeder in Arizona. While it’s in my nature to research such things to learn more about them, in the case of the hummingbirds I made the decision to simply enjoy them rather than analyze them. That’s worked pretty well for me so far, but I’m still tempted to do the ID thing, and probably will one of these days.

8 thoughts on “POTD: Hummer #2”

  1. There’s a great documentary by David Attenborough on hummingbirds that we watched recently. They really are amazing creatures. Loving these images of them.

  2. Stephen E Johnson

    Nice shot! With modern photography it’s great to be able to shoot hundreds of digital shots and not have to go to a dark closet to see which ones to spend more money on . Even so, when I was in Costa Rica and was presented with scores and scores of the little creatures, it seemed my trusty camera phone just couldn’t shoot fast enough on those cloudy rainy days or twilight settings, which there were a lot of. Hummers around here don’t allow me to approach close enough for decent shots. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Thanks Steve. Yes, cell phone cameras are no match for hummingbirds. It takes a shutter speed at least as fast as 1/2000sec and preferably more like 1/2000sec to freeze wing action which a camera phone would be hard pressed to achieve. And of course they’re small so you have to be really close, which they would not likely allow, or have a good telephoto. I found I could sit as close as about 12-15 feet of the hummingbird feeder without scaring them off. That relatively close distance, a good telephoto lens, and a healthy image crop is what allowed these close-in views. Still I took literally 100s if not 1,000+ images of the hummers with lots of deletes due to poor focus, slow shutter speed, etc. Still it’s cheaper than film, at least if you don’t value your time as it takes forever to sort through all the images.

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