Humming Birds

Thought you might enjoy this pic of some broad tailed hummers in my yard. I'm still trying to get better shots but it is hot! There are usually three or four around playing at fighter pilots. I love hummer season.

Cool Bill.

I hear them all the time in our yard and have wanted to get a shot of them, but we're reluctant to put up a feeder due to previous bear troubles with seed feeders.

Nice! These guys can't be easy to photograph, and I really like the interaction between the two birds here.

Nice catch. Great composition and background. Too bad the one in flight is out of focus.

There are a few more here, some are sharper than others. Enjoy

http://www.billmeikle.com/index.php?option=com_rsgallery2&Itemid=9&gid=15

If the above link doesn't work go to www.billmeikle.com and click Images and Avian, when I tested it it didn't seem to work properly.

Wow, that's one of the better hummingbird photos I've ever seen. Nice one, Bill!

Very nice capture!

Wow, that's terrific! What's the shutter speed??

Excelent Bill! I also love the interacton of the birds in many of your shots and this one is just awesome.
John

You've got some excellent shots in that collection, Bill. The one above is one of the stronger images; great action and I love the "pose" of the one in the tree. Not sure if it's shutter speed or DOF, but to Bill's point, anything that you can do next time to keep them sharp would be well worth the effort. Nice shooting!

Way way cool hummer shot Bill, I love it.

Shutter speed was 1/1250s to answer the question from Stan. They are fast birds so in later shots I upped the ISO a little. I want the wings blurred though to show the action as well as sharp eye and body.

Bill,
Great collection of shots. I really like the ones with the orange flowers in them, they add so much color.

Super gallery of hummers, Bill. It appears you aren't using flash which means your aperature is pretty wide open at 1/1250sec unless you're using 1600 ISO. My guess is you're using 400-800ISO at about f5.6-7.1 and no flash. If you used 4-5 flashes in manual mode, with a painted background in a shaded area, you could really freeze those wings, but you would also be able to use a smaller aperature like f16 for a better chance at getting both birds in sharp focus. Hummers are tough little birds to shoot, but you have great reflexes as your photos demonstrate.

Thanks Don, I did some shots with flash and for one thing I had problems with the exposure and for another the hummers didn't like it. I am also happy to report that I am seeing at least broad tailed and rufous hummers and one day after rain they were literally bathing on wet leaves high up in my apple tree, in fact they were belly flopping onto the leaves, amazing (to me at least). No I didnt get photos of that behavior.

Great action!

Wow, great shot!