August
is the month of the migrating hummingbirds in Las Vegas. Since most
migrating birds are immature, that is what you will see frequently at any feeder. If the
feeder has a resident owner he will be kept flitting around, chasing all those
new impertinent migrating hummers away from his feeder.
 |
| Most likely an young Costa's |
If your
feeder is without an owner, you will see a lot of young birds taking advantage
of the free food. Kris Kelley has a feeder he put up the end of July for the
first time. It didn’t take long for the hummers to find it. Within a short time
he had plenty of visitors. The fact that his property backs against a ½ mile stretch
of road that is landscaped on both sides by the HOA with many different kinds
of flowering plants – lantana, birds of paradise, yellow bells, and oleanders –
gives him a huge advantage to attracting the hummers. They already have an eye
on his neighborhood.
Kris is
my massage therapist (
www.las-vegas-massage-kris-kelley.com
). He started me into blogging and I talked him into hummingbird photography. He was
kind enough to send me his pictures with permission to use them in my blog.
 |
| An immature male Anna's |
He is using
a Nikon Coolpix 4800 ED. His camera is on a tripod set up about 10 feet from
the feeder, with an 8x zoom. He is using the natural lighting, but he is
looking in from the sun lighted area rather than looking out into it. The only use
of a photo app is Photoscape for sharpening the pictures.
Kris
reports that the secret of getting close enough to the birds to get good shots
is ‘hang out around the feeder so the hummers get used to having a human
around.’ He also commented that hummers move so quick the
photographer soon realizes a top-of-the-line, fast-action camera
would be a real asset to photographing these birds.
 |
| If you look carefully you can see the purple that marks this as an immature Black-chinned |
I have
had the same thoughts.
I am sure
everybody who has ever taken hummingbird pictures feels the same way. I have
missed more than one great shot because my camera was too slow to focus. These
ended up in the ‘almost file.’ I
almost got a picture of the Costa’s whistling
posture. I
almost got a picture of him fly catching, in fact I only cut off his
head in the picture! I
almost got a shot of one hummer chasing another away
from the feeder. Sigh, so much for the almost file. When one is standing there
with the camera in hand, it gets a little frustrating to keep filling that
file.
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