Fall hummingbird update from Las Vegas NV – and a little physics at the feeder

With the cooler weather here in Las Vegas NV I can keep my windows open in the morning. During that time I am able to listen to whatever birds happen to be singing or calling in my neighborhood. I often hear the whistle of the Costa’s hummingbird, sitting in a bush or on his favorite perch on the feeder.

                I also hear the chatter of the Anna’s hummingbird sitting in a nearby tree and the chirps of the Verdin as it hunts for tiny insects and spiders among the Texas sage blossoms on the south side of my house. I hear the chips of the Northern Mockingbird sitting on the top of the neighbor’s house and the abbreviated song of a house finch warming up his voice for spring. Once I heard a song I was not familiar with, I listened with great care before I decided it probably was the song of a passing migrant. I had to because too often I have been fooled into the wrong identification of a song due to the mimicry of the mockingbird. When mockingbirds mimic others sounds, they usually can’t resist throwing in a little or a lot of their other repertoire. If you listen for a few minutes and the song stays pure it most likely really belongs to that bird and is not the mockingbird mocking you.

                I see the Costa’s and Anna’s at the feeders regularly. The finches are still coming for water off and on throughout the day. There are not as many, since the flocks of young have mostly moved elsewhere. I know hummingbirds and finches are coming even when I don’t see them because I have to keep replenishing the sweet water in the feeders and the drinking water in the ant moats. I also know the north side feeder is being used because if I disturb a hummer coming to the west side feeder, it simply zips around to the north side of the house and feeds there.

A safe perch for the Costa's. When this was taken on Sept 25 at 10:21 a.m. the wind was 40 mph

                The tall feeders give an excellent demonstration of the physics of light when there is a hummer drinking on the far side. The feeder is made of heavy glass and contains denser water, since it includes sugar. This is a marvelous medium to show the refraction of light. Light moves at the speed of light only when it is in a vacuum. When it travels through anything else it must slow down. The denser the medium the slower it moves. As the light slows down it bends, like a car skidding when it suddenly changes speed. What we see is the object looking to be someplace it is not. That is why the fish or penny in the water is never where you think it is.

                In this picture the tail of the hummingbird is visible under the feeder; the head of the hummingbird can be seen through the glass with sweet water in it. The head seems to be totally unattached to the tail. Demonstrating that physics is everywhere with us, including in hummingbird feeders in Las Vegas NV.

Costa’s and Anna’s hummingbirds in Las Vegas NV – still at my feeder

                Here we are in the middle of September. The only hummers I see at my feeder in Las Vegas NV are Costa’s and Anna’s.  If there are others around, they aren’t advertising their presence. I regularly hear and see the Costa’s and the Anna’s.

                Anna’s hummingbird seldom stays around long enough for me to get the camera, turn it on, focus and snap a picture. Therefore I can’t record my sightings, even though she at time hovers right in front of my face. One day I was checking the north side feeder just at sunrise, when along came a very offended female Anna’s. She hovered a short distance away and then flew off before I had a chance to leave the area.

                The Costa’s hummingbird, on the other hand, is not affected that much by my presence. He sits at the west side feeder and ignores me at the door. He stays around while I take picture after picture. Consequently I have lots of pictures of the male Costa’s hummingbird.

                One great thing about photography is pictures give you time to exam the details that the living bird doesn’t grant you. Often, after I have put the photo through the photo editor, be it Snapseed, PicShop or Aviary, I am amazed at what I have captured in pixels. (We can’t say ‘on film’ anymore, times have changed and hence our vocabulary must change as well.)

Male Costa's posing for a picture

                The first picture that really revealed those details to me was of the Costa’s male on August 7, 2013. He was at the feeder and paused for me to take his picture. When I put it through Aviary and used the Arizona filter – which acts to brighten the picture and bring out the details, but tends to turn it slightly pink – I could see this was a bird that had just finished its molt. I could see that the feathers were just coming out of the pin stage and hadn’t yet smoothed out, giving the bird a really rough look.

                Since I had a pet parakeet as my constant companion when I was young, I am very accustomed to seeing this stage of the molt. Wild birds don’t get as close as pets so I don’t remember seeing it in other birds until I saw it in the picture.

                The second picture of the Costa’s male hummingbird was taken September 13, 2013. This one also had a rough look to it, just not as rough as the first. I wondered if it was a young-of-the-year male that had just come into its full plumage. This one is a little harder to see so I can’t be sure.

Taken in late afternoon the sunlight shinning on the feeder is reflected onto his breast.

                I am sad that the other hummers have left me, but then I remember when I had feeders up north I took them down the middle of September because the last straggler, usually a Rufus male, would come sometime around the 14 of September and then they were all gone. There was no reason to leave the feeders up after that. At least here I can keep my feeders going all winter and still have visitors on a regular basis.

Photographing hummingbirds in Las Vegas NV– how to create a usable picture

                Hummingbirds in Las Vegas NV, like birds everywhere, don’t sit around waiting for their pictures to be taken. The photographer has to be the one to make the concessions and set up the equipment right to get the good picture. Top wildlife photographers have top-of-the-line equipment.

As taken by the camera

                Most of us don’t fit into that category. I know I don’t. I use the digital equivalent of a point-and-shot camera. I don’t have special lighting and I wait for the birds to come to me rather than go out beating the bush looking for them. What results are pictures that are less than perfect. The birds come under the patio roof. The sun is shining brightly on the block wall of my yard. I am dealing with strongly back lighted subjects. If I were using my old Pentax K1000 manual camera I would compensate for the back lighting and make my subject the focal point of the picture. My digital camera doesn’t do that. What I end up with is a dark silhouette of a bird against a light background.

                At one time that would have been a disaster. Not today with the wonders of digital photography and computing power. Now I have three different photo editing apps on my iPad. I put my pictures through the apps and – viola – out comes a very usable picture. Many times it is far better than I had anticipated. 

Put through Snapseed

Using a filter from Aviary

                The three apps that I use are all free; I haven’t yet felt the need to actually pay for one, although I am getting close. I wanted one to start with that was super easy to use so I started with Snapseed.  The first photo I used that on was of smoke from the Carpenter 1 fire on the mountain west of us. I used every tool available, and created quite a fake looking picture of it. I learned to tone down my edits after that.

As taken by my iPad

Going all out with Snapseed

As taken by my Canon

Using Arizona filter from Aviary

                Of course one free app isn’t enough once you start using them. I had to download two more. I mean, after all, they’re free! The two I chose were Aviary and PicShop lite. I found that one picture would edit better in one app than the others according to its needs. Consequently I use all three apps.

Putting the filtered picture through PicShop

                Sometimes I put the picture through one app and then finish it off in another, just for varieties sake. In whatever way I do it I am usually pleased with the results. It’s not great photography but it shows details and what I want to illustrate about the birds. What more can I ask?

Costa’s and Finches keep my Las Vegas feeder going – but no very busy

                Here at my feeder in Las Vegas NV nothing would be going on if it weren’t for the Costa’s hummingbird and the House finches. Between the two, they keep my focus on the feeder, camera at the ready.

                The Finches are beginning to show signs of flocking. While most will stay with me all winter, some will move on, traveling in mixed flocks made up of American Goldfinches, Lesser Goldfinches and House finches. Because of this flocking instinct my feeder is visited not by one or two finches but by five together. Sometimes they try to get to the watering holes all at the same time. Other times they wait for their turns. I never know what will happen next.

One finch on the feeder, two waiting in line

                The Costa’s hummingbird is the tamest bird I have ever seen. He stays around the feeder, perching quietly. He doesn’t care if I open the door. It doesn’t bother him if the dogs run out, or the cat stands and watches him. All that gets him moving is another hummer trying to get a drink from his feeder, or if a juicy insect flies by.

                While hummingbirds require nectar or sweet water to provide them with concentrated calories, it isn’t enough for them to live on. Like people, a diet of carbs does not let them thrive. They need the protein and fats in insects. So when they aren’t drinking sweet water, nectar or chasing away intruders they spend their time looking for insects. Sometimes they find them on a leaf, which is why you’ll see them hovering over a green bush with no flowers, other times they catch them out of the air.

Drinking sweet water

                I was able to photograph the Costa’s sitting at the feeder drinking, and then moving to a perch where he could watch for insects. Since I have numerous potted plants on my patio it attracts numerous insects. He flew in under the patio roof to garner some insects. I almost got a picture of him hovering there except my camera wouldn’t focus in quick enough to catch him in the act. Maybe next time.

Watching from a convenient perch

I had the same problem trying to get a picture of him scratching himself. I would snap the picture just as he was raising his leg to scratch his neck only to find that the picture I got was right after he finished, but before he had a chance to straighten out his feathers. Maybe next time.

Through scratching, but no time to tidy up

                I keep wondering when he will leave me. I looked at the Peterson's Field Guide to Birds app on my iPad. His wintering range starts just south of Las Vegas in southern California and Arizona, except for one small section in southern Nevada, which includes Las Vegas. Maybe he won’t be leaving me at all!

Slow times at the hummingbird feeder in Las Vegas, NV – at least at mine!

Here it is the first Monday in September and I am still struggling with what to write about. I know from the amount of sweet water that is being consumed at my feeders that there are hummingbirds around, but they aren’t staying long enough for me to photograph them.

I hear the whistles of the Costa’s in the morning and see him once and awhile. The problem with being around too much is that it is no longer exciting to see him, hence the phrase: ‘familiarity breeds contempt.’ Even when he is chasing other hummers away I know it is he and so don’t pay that much attention.

The hummers I do see at the feeder all seem to be the young-of-the-year.

Immature hummer at the west feeder

These are so hard to identify that I have to rely on photography to get even an idea of which species they are. Since these are mostly migrants that are just passing through, they haven’t gained any trust of me. As soon as they see me with the camera, off they go. Some of them don’t even alight to feed, but move from feeding station to feeding station on the wing. That presents even more challenges to photography without a fast-action camera.

At the north one

I have noticed that the north side feeder seems to get more action than the west side feeder. I don’t know if it that is because I am not at the window looking north as often as I am looking west, or if it is that the Costa’s doesn’t patrol the north side feeder as assiduously as he does the other side’s. Photography with that feeder presents its own challenges since the camera does insist on focusing on the plant behind it.

Flitting for food

My hummers are at a low right now, but other feeders are still hoping – flitting? I regularly get a report of six or seven hummers at a time feeding at a home east of mine. It is in an older neighborhood, so has more mature vegetation. I don’t know if that makes the difference, or if it just the location on the flight path of the hummers. Those feeders have to be filled twice a day to keep up with the demand.

While I don’t have much action going on with hummers, I do have more with finches. The mother finch, who originally came to the ant moat for water, has returned with two more fledglings following her. Now I’m up to five finches coming for water. This presents a steady stream of finches.

These have their own interesting actions. One day a finch decided to try and take a bath in the ant moat. She did her best, but I doubt if she got much bathing. She flapped her wings and tried to get water on her breast. She tried from one angle and then another. Finally she flew away and I never did know if she succeeded.

A very small bath tub!