As the migration of the hummingbirds continues through North Texas we had five or six hummers at our number one feeder most of last week. I think the rainy overcast weather kept them here longer then normal. It gave me an opportunity that I don’t get very often to try taking more photographs of them. I’ve got a D70 Nikon DSLR and a 70-300mm telephoto lens that I’ve used in the past to take pictures of hummingbirds. I’ve not gotten the quality of photos that I though myself capable of getting in the past. With a combination of ideas including taping over all but one of the feeder holes, forcing the hummers to feed where the light would be best and I having my camera pre-focused at that spot to minimize my reaction time to getting a shot. I set up the tripod and camera about 4 feet away from the feeder to let them get used to seeing it by the feeder. Then I stood behind the tripod for a while, again for them to get comfortable with seeing the camera and me. Last week it was partly cloudy ever day and so I spend a lot of time waiting for the right time where I had enough light to get a good shutter speed necessary to get good stop action photos of the wings. I also needed the light to better reflect the iridescence colors of the hummers. After standing for hours and hours, two days turned out very productive and I got some good photos. The only disappointment was the lack of any male Ruby Throated hummingbirds. Of the half dozen hummers that worked the feeder only one was a male and he rarely showed up during the day and when he did it was early morning or just before dusk. So I didn’t get any photos of him. In fact the only shots I got of a male was about 10 seconds on the video I posted earlier.
Below is a gallery of the results of last week’s shooting.
