Challenge 1: The Hummingbird Stereotype
An image search for California hummingbirds brings back a set of images that is dominated by two poses: a side view of the bird with wings above the body or a perched bird. These two common poses imply that birds activities are primarly are either hovering or sitting. The next four photos have the typical, stereotype poses so often shown to represent hummingbirds.
What’s missing are true action shots. Where are the pictures that show what the birds are doing?
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You’ll see that virtually all of our images show activity. That’s because we rarely saw a hummingbird simply hovering without an obvious purpose. Perched birds were often far away. Tree-top snags seem to be a favorite resting site and observation platform.
What we saw were individuals that spent a lot of time dashing from flower to flower. For the most part, the flowers have a long tubular structure. The birds stick their bill deep inside to get nectar (page 9).
Rapidly beating wings provide support and motion as a hummingbird moves about. The tail is important, too (page 10). This is not seen very often. Photos make it clear that getting into and holding a position often requires a whole-body effort (page 11).
Things happen quickly. Too fast, perhaps, for the eye to catch the details.
That’s where photography is important. Each image freezes the action. Now we can zoom in and see the details without a fear of disturbing the hummingbird.
What we see is often missed with “posed” photos. Images of the birds doing their natural activities reveals a complex set of behaviors and interesting interactions.
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Challenge 2: Photographing Hummingbirds
There has been a fairly standard setup for hummingbird photography. A digital camera with a telephoto lens, perched on a heavy tripod. This points at an artificial background (e.g., white card stock) with a set of electronic flashes pointed at a key location, sometimes stick placed as a perch or a branch with flowers extending up from a potted plant. There is likely a feeder nearby to attract the birds.
An example of this arrangement is shown in a photo of Tom Bol’s setup from a Nikon USA website (page 13).
We’re not denigrating this approach to hummingbird photography. Indeed, before the development of several modern technologies (e.g., mirrorless cameras, high pixel count sensors and AI bird focus), a static setup was about the only way to get high-quality images of these birds.
Now, we can go find the hummingbirds in their more natural habitats. In doing so, we hope to reveal more about these interesting animals.
Here’s how our field activities differs from the “traditional” setup.
• Find the hummingbirds. This involves locating them in an area an then positioning yourself at a place where you hope to get a good shot. We did a lot of walking. It really helps to listen for the faint chirps. Your ear will get you to stop when your near a hummingbird’s territory. A good ear is an essential piece of “gear.”
• Track the birds. Hummingbirds generally move fast (read: very fast) between feeding sites. You need to point the camera in the right direction. A camera with a telephoto lens can get heavy after an hour or two of swinging it back and forth. Image stabilization, both in the lens and the camera body, help. Be prepared for a workout.
• Grab focus. Perhaps most challenging of all, you need to get the camera to focus on the bird’s eye. The eye is generally not the object closest to the camera. Traditional autofocus systems tend to lock on the nearest thing inside the focus area. Getting the bird’s eye in focus is a requirement of acceptable photos and AI focus technology is, most often, an essential tool.
• Shoot a lot of images. All parts of the bird’s body are subject to movement, especially the wings. Getting a lot of images very quickly generay increases the chances of finding a few special photos. A typical day’s activities on this trip resulted in more than 2,000 photos (or more than 4,000 images as each photo was captured in RAW and JPG).
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Tom Bol’s hummingbird setup (source: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-techniques/how-to-photograph-hummingbirds.html).
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Our Kit
The photography kit comprises two primary components: the camera equipment and the digital processing tools. The camera equipment, designed for field use, includes the camera and its associated accessories. The digital processing tools, primarily utilized during off-hours, consist of a computer and related software. Both elements carry equal significance and operate under the same stipulations: reducing weight and size while maintaining satisfactory performance. Our minimalist kit is designed for easy transportation as carry-on luggage. Navigating the gardens is also easier when one travels light (page 15). Moreover, an essential aspect of our process is the ability to review photographs in a timely manner, ensuring they meet the quality standards and accurately capture the intended subject matter.
Our kit changes with the introduction of better (and hopefully, lighter) tools. For this trip, we used the following technology.
The Camera Part
• Sony ILCE-7RM5 camera.
• Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM OSS lens.
• Peak Design camera strap.
• 160 GB CFexpress Type A cards (2 in camera, 2 in pocket).
• Sony NP-FZ100 battery (1 in camera, 1 in pocket)
• ThinkTank: Retrospective LC2 camera bag.
The Computer Part
• Sony BC-QZ1 Type Z battery charger with power cable.
• Sony MRW-G2 CFexpress Type A card reader with USB-C cable.
• LG Gram 16” laptop computer (16Z9OP; 2021).
• Microsoft Surface arc mouse with mousepad.
• Anker 737 charger (GaNPrime 120W) with USB C cable.
• Sandisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD (2) with USB-A to USB-C cable.
Key Software
• Microsoft: Windows 11
• Adobe: Photoshop (2023), inDesign (2023)
• Topaz Labs: DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, Photo AI, Gigapixel AI
• Nik Collection: Nik 6 Color Efex
• Camera Bits: Photo Mechanic
• RStudio (with R): Packages SiteMaps, Exifr, Tidyverse, GT
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We hand-hold the camera while standing well back from the plants in which there is some hummingbird activity. Note this gives the other people in the area an opportunity to take pictures without their being crowded.
Overall Performance
This kit, both the camera and computer parts, met our expectations in terms of transportability, field use and evening photo tasks.
This kit isn’t for everyone. There are several drawbacks.
It was expensive. Carrying a single lens limits the flexibility. We would be challenged to take panoramic shots in the gardens, for example, with this kit.
We’ve learned that we’re generally most successful when we focus on a single task. The panorama pictures can wait for a different trip, one where we limit our shots to that sort of imagery.
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Bird Autofocus: A Sharp Eye
One of the key technology developments is the series of AI autofocus subjects. The Sony A7R5 lets you choose between people, animals, birds, insects, cars/trains and airplanes. According to the literature, the bird focus is on the eye, head or body.
The detection isn’t perfect. Most of the focus failures in our images are attributed to the to the subject’s small size, being obscured by vegetation, or fast movement. What was amazing was how well this focus system worked given some serious constraints. Hummingbirds are one of the species that is among the hardest for an automatic system.
A set of photos shows hummingbirds in focus under conditions that are difficult to impossible for a traditional focusing system.
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Bokeh
Many traditional hummingbird photographers place a background behind their focal point (page 13). This produces either a neutral (often white) background or an image with what appears to be a smooth bokeh from the natural background. Both situations can be misleading as they hint at an environment that is artificial.
Photographing using a wide aperature lens (e.g., f/4.5) will generally give a natural bokeh. The colors and texture will better represent what the hummingbird sees in the distance. This ranges from a smooth, neutral color (pages 23 to 29) to vivid patches of color or patterns (pages 30 to 35) which reflect the type or structure of the surrounding vegetation.
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Shutter Speed: Freezing Motion
There is a debate about whether a hummingbird photograph should show wing motion or the action should be frozen with perfect focus. External strobe lights tend to stop movement. That’s OK for “studio-like setups.” We’re of the opinion that a little motion is good as it conveys a sense of the speed with which the birds are beating their wings to staying aloft.
Sometimes, you catch the moment when the wings change direction (pages 37 and 38). This makes the wing look like it’s nearly stopped. In other situations, the wings range from having a slight blur to being a fuzzy area aside the bird (pages 39 to 41).
All the photos shown here were taken with a shutter speed of 1/2000 second. For us, this seems to be a good compromise as we get some variety in the photos of birds showing different behaviors.
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Big Images: Lens & Image Sensor
A Sony EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS lens was used for all the photos. This is a fairly compact and light lens, given its focal length.
Camera shake can blur an otherwise well-focused photo. The telephoto lens has image stabilization. The camera does, too. Together, camera shake was not apparent in the images. That’s fortunate as it eliminates the need for a tripod.
The Sony A7R5 camera has a large digital sensor (61 mpixels). This is essential as all the photos need to be cropped so that the subject (a hummingbird) is sufficiently large.
A full-sized photo is shown below. The distance to the hummingbird was about 12 feet (4 m). The image on page 43 shows a crop of this photo. It’s typical of all the selected images. This shows the advantage of having a large (9504×6336 pixel) sensor.
As an example of the details that remain in the cropped photo, look for the spider on the plant just ahead of the hummingbird’s wing tip. (The spider could soon be food for this bird.)
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Selective Focus: Aperture
The telephoto lens has a variable aperture, ranging from f/4.5 at 100 mm to f/5.6 at 400 mm. Since all the selected photos were taken at 400 mm, they all have an f value of 5.6.
The depth of field with a full-frame camera using a 400 mm lens at f/5.6 at a distance of 14 feet (4.3 m) is about 0.5 inches (3.2 cm). This increases to 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) at 30 feet (9.1 m). These distances are about the range for the selected photos.
It’s clear that by using the telephoto lens open (i.e., f/5.6), only a very narrow band will be in focus. That emphasizes the importance of having a sharp focus on the bird’s eye.
Image Exposure: ISO
Two of the three exposure values were constant in all the selected photos: 1/2000 second shutter speed and an aperture value of f/5.6. What varied was the ISO.
The chart on page 45 shows the range of ISO values. Most values were well within the range that’s handled by the camera’s sensor.
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Critical Adjustment: Exposure Compensation
The Sony A7R5 has a thumbwheel that sits next to your right thumb as you hold the camera. Rotating this control adjusts the camera-determined exposure just a bit.
There is a menu setting that turns on the zebra function. When activated, bright areas that are near overexposure will have a striped pattern. This is a warning. The zebra areas will be “blown out.” The exposure compensation dial is used to make the necessary adjustment.
The chart below show the frequency and amount of adjustment done on the selected photos.
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Image Processing
Screening
A total of 125 images were selected as candidates for use in this document. This was done by rapidly screening the pictures from one garden at a time. Over 8,000 shots were taken over the five days, but many good photos were not chosen for further processing, often because they were near duplicates. It is certain that many excellent pictures were overlooked, some likely better than those shown here, as the desire to complete the document in a timely way took precedence over other considerations. In general, “good enough” was deemed to be good enough.
Camera Bits’ Photo Mechanic was used to do most of the screening.
Exposure Adjustment
RAW images were the starting point for processing in Adobe’s Photoshop. Basic exposure adjustments and a few other small modifications of the image properties were made at this point using the Camera Raw.
Cropping & Scaling
In the course of image processing, each chosen photograph was cropped appropriate to the hummingbird’s size, while preserving other elements of the photograph to maintain context. This operation resulted in a significant decrease in the image’s dimensions. Following a quantitative analysis of approximately 50% of the selections, the median image size was found to retain a median of 7.7% of the original photograph’s pixels. The frequency distribution of the remaining pixel percentages in these modified images is depicted in the chart on page 49.
Upscaling was done so the cropped photos would have either 2550×3300 or 5100×3300 pixel dimensions. These enlarged images were then adjusted to the print dimensions of 8.5×11 inches at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch.
This extreme cropping, followed by fairly modest upscaling, was necessary. It was also possible, as the Sony A7R5 sensor is large with an area of 60.2 mpixel and dimensions of 9504×6336 pixels.
Noise Reduction
Modern camera sensors are quite good at preventing digital noise from appearing in
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images. Nonetheless, virtually all photos can benefit from some noise reduction. Topaz DeNoise AI does an outstanding job. The result is an image with smooth, even tones in areas without detail.
Sharpening
Finally, the previous image manipulation procedures required some image sharpening. Contemporary image editing software, such as Topaz Sharpen AI, effectively performs this function well, especially as this software allows the sharpening to be applied selectively.
Assembly
This document was composed in Adobe’s inDesign. Photo Mechanic was most useful in helping keep track of which photos had been used. It was a pleasant surprise that these two programs worked together.
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Challenge 3: Representing Hummingbird Activities
The first challenge (page 4) highlighted a desire to update the stereotyped view of hummingbirds. Limitations of photography, and perhaps the standards imposed due to showing identification characteristics, have limited the types of hummingbird images shown on Internet sites.
This section aims to show the variety of activities of hummingbirds. Some of these are straightforward, such as nectar feeding and pollination. Even a short period of viewing reveals a range of flying skills as a bird probes flowers of different shapes and orientation.
Other activities are relatively rare and therefore harder to photograph. Territorial encounters are difficult to document as they can be extremely brief, fast-moving events. Similarly, seeing a bird snatch an insect is not common. Capturing reproductive activities requires patience and luck.
This section shows a few of our successes in documenting the range of hummingbird activities.
Feeding: Nectar Carbohydrates
Hummingbird diets generally consist of plant nectar. This supplies both sugars and water. Pollen is often seen sticking to a hummingbird’s bill. Some is likely ingested, too, although it is thought that little of the pollen is digested.
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Arthropods: Protein for the Diet
Do you remember seeing the spider on page 43? Was the mention of the bird eating a spider a surprise?
Sure, here is the improved text:
Small arthropods may make up a significant part of a hummingbird’s diet. Eating these tiny insects and spiders provides protein and, at the least, supplements the bird’s consumption of carbohydrate-rich nectar. However, observational difficulties may be biasing our ideas about hummingbird feeding.
Hummingbirds are often observed feeding on nectar, which is relatively easy to see. However, it is more difficult to observe hummingbirds feeding on arthropods. This is because arthropods are small and often hidden from view. Additionally, hummingbirds are often quick to capture and eat arthropods, making it difficult to document these feeding events.
Despite these observational difficulties, there is some scientific literature that indicates that some hummingbird species rely heavily or exclusively on an arthropod diet.
In our own observations, we were fortunate to photograph three instances where hummingbirds were eating arthropods. In the first photo (page 57), a hummingbird can be seen with a small insect in its beak. In the next photo (page 58), the body of an insect can be seen protruding from the bird’s beak. A subsequent exposure (too blury and not included here) shows the bird swallowing the insect. The third example (page 59) shows an insect flying near a hummingbird. Several following pictures (again, not shown because of poor focus) document the bird capturing this insect.
These observations suggest that arthropods may play a role in the diet of hummingbirds even when there are abundant flowers. However, more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis. In the meantime, it would be interesting to try to look specifically for incidents of arthropod feeding in hummingbirds, instead of emphasizing the gathering of nectar.
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Pollination
The process starts when the hummingbird sticks its beak into the flower. Beyond the beak’s tip, a long tongue darts in and out, bringing nectar into the beak and eventually the bird’s throat.
The floral tube isn’t empty. Inside, the plant’s reproductive structures occupy part of the space. The hummingbird must get past these floral elements to reach the nectar. If there is any pollen on the beak, some might be rubbed off onto the stigma and lead to the fertilization of the plant. Pollen on the plant’s anthers rub off onto the beak. These reproductive propagules will be carried to another flower.
The result of the successive thrusts into the floral tubes can result in a beak covered, in part, with pollen.
Look closely at the beak in the pictures. Often, you’ll see some telltable yellow or white “powder.” That’s the pollen a hummingbird is collecting as it probes the flower for nectar.
Some flowers are structure to deposit and collect pollen on other parts of the bird, such as the top of the head (pages 68 and 69).
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Hovering
People write about hummingbirds flying, but what most people see are birds that are hovering. Flight of these nimble individuals is often very fast and hard to photograph.
Hovering, whether it occurs out in the open or near a flower, is very special. This is the outstanding characteristic of these species. Hummingbirds can hold their body very still while in a variety of poses.
Studies of the pattern of rapid wing movement, show that a hummingbird gets lift from both the up and downstrokes by inverting the wing on the upstroke. We’re not likely so see this in still photos. We do see the result: what appears to be precise position control.
Photographs show that the bird’s tail sometimes comes into play, even if this is for a brief instant.
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Sitting Around
A perched hummingbird is likely to be active. Territoriality requires a constant vigil looking for intruders. This might also include vocalization (as appears to be happening with the bird on page 83)
Scratching, preening, stretching and snoozing are other frequent tasks (pages 84 and 85).
For us, as observers, a perched male bird may also give us a good view of its gorget (page 86 and 87) as we can into the right angle with the sun and see the bird without interferrence of the vegetation.
Hummingbirds were sometimes seen holding onto stems either while gathering nectar or between flower visits (page 88) or to become steady (page 89).
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Territoriality
Many hummingbird species are very territorial. You see this in several ways.
Perched birds are on the lookout for any intruder. Watch the bird looking back and forth, back and forth and it turns its head searching for any evidence that another bird is poaching its territory.
The sight of a male’s colorful gorget is a warning sign that’s easily seen when you face the bird head on. The flash of colors can be very bright. It really stands out.
Sometimes you observe an encounter (pages 92 and 93; 94 and 95). Two birds facing each other, tail feathers splayed. It’s over in an instant as one of the two challengers flys off into the distant trees.
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Flowers
It’s a mutualistic relationship. Birds get the energy-rich nectar; flowers have their pollen carried to other flowers.
In many species, this kind of relationship is very specific. One kind of insect is matched with one kind of plant. That makes for a kind of efficiency as pollen is more likely to reach the intended species.
The California hummingbirds we saw in the gardens move from one kind of plant to another. A common feature of the flowers is their shape. Long tubes seem to be favored, presumably because they are able to hold more nectar.
The flowers come in a full range of colors and shapes.
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K. W. Bridges & N. L. Furumoto
