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?

You’ll see that virtually all of our images show activity. That’s because we rarely saw a hummingbird simply hovering. 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.

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).

Tom Bol’s hummingbird setup (source: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-techniques/how-to-photograph-hummingbirds.html).