Day 98—More Of The Same

I think I might have to rename my blog “Hummer Photo of the Day.” Lately, my go to photo of the day seems to be something to do with hummingbirds. I did photograph a Swainson’s hawk that flew over my house today, and was able to identify it because the shots I took showed the distinct underwing patterns of the Swainson’s, a hawk I’d never knowingly seen before. But, it was pretty far up so the shots were not good enough to use on the blog. While I never tire of watching and photographing hummingbirds, I think I need to add more hummingbird friendly plants in my yard to get some different views of them instead of shooting them perched on the feeder. If they don’t have a place to land comfortably, I might be more apt to achieve my goal of getting good, in focus shots of a hummer in flight.

Today’s daily challenge topic is “happiness” and to me, happiness is getting a good bird photo, so when I saw the hummer at the feeder I went out to see what I could get. While I didn’t get any shots of a hummer in flight, I was rewarded with what I think is an interesting sequence. The hummer, a female Anna’s, had something in her beak when I started to photograph her high in a leafless branch over my head. At first I thought she was eating small bugs on the branch and it was only when I downloaded the photos that I discovered that she was trying to get a piece of fuzz, perhaps a bit of spider web from her nest, off her beak.

Here she is with the fuzz on the tip of her beak:

Here she places the fuzz on the branch:

And, here she is with a fuzzless beak and the fuzz can be seen on the branch where she placed it.

All photos:

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 250
f/14
1/250
Cropped and Levels
Yesterday, both my shots were SOOC. Today, the shots seemed drab so I brightened them using a levels adjustment.