Month: March 2024

There are a number of Hermits in the Hummingbird world. We saw two in Costa Rica, the Green Hermit, a relatively large hummer and the Stripe-throated Hermit, one of the smallest Hummingbirds. The Stripe-throated doesn’t have the bright greens and blues and reds that embellish many of the other hummers we saw in Costa Rica. Instead it is a rather subdued rust color. This tiny hummer appeared briefly over the top of the Rabo de Gato hedge and I managed a few clicks. When it dropped down to feed at the purple flowers, it all but disappeared into the surrounding mass of stems and flowers.

Hummingbirds are indeed the jewels of the sky! Even Hummingbirds that do not have Hummingbird in their name, like this White-necked Jacobin, a glimmering gem of sapphire and emerald. The Jacobins were the predominant Hummingbirds at our rancho in Costa Rica although many other species made an appearance there. They chased the Mangos and the Mangos chased them. And, they chased all the other hummers that approached the feeders as well. That is until the end of the day when things slowed down just a bit and they seemed to tolerate each others’ presence before nightfall and subsequent torpor.

Costa Rica is a bird lover’s paradise. I saw and heard dozens of birds last week and I photographed twenty-three different bird species, all but one I had never seen before. The Blue-gray Tanager was one of my favorites. Its coloring is a delightful powder blue with sapphire wings and tail. It’s a real standout from the green of the surroundings.

Pinch me, I must be dreaming. That’s what I felt while I was in Costa Rica last week. Although I’ve been to Costa Rica three other times, the focus was on many birds, not Hummingbirds specifically. This visit was Hummingbird-centric. Hummers are near and dear to my heart and I photograph them in my own garden often. But, I had never seen, let alone photographed, any of the nine species I saw and photographed on this visit. I’ve already shared the gorgeous White-necked Jacobin and the elusive Snowcap. This is a male Green-breasted Mango whose breast actually appears blue to me with green on either side. But I don’t name these flying jewels, I just try to photograph them.

The lodge where we stayed had a deck from which we photographed Hummingbirds that came to the many feeders hanging around it. Getting flight shots was my goal. But the feeder is the last thing I want to see in a photograph of a flying Hummingbird. Sometimes it was very difficult to avoid getting parts of the feeder in the photograph because space on the deck was limited and there were several of us with our gear on tripods, so moving even a few inches from one side to the other to avoid it was not always possible. Fortunately, I figured out how to avoid getting the feeders in the photographs: don’t photograph near the feeders. Sounds logical but it wasn’t obvious to me at first. I decided to focus on a particular Mango on a natural perch affixed to the deck. I realized that he would regularly fly straight up from the perch, stop for a fraction of a second at eye level, and then fly to the feeder, returning within seconds to land on the same perch again. He repeated this over and over. Then it hit me what I needed to do. I positioned the lens with the top of his head at the bottom of the viewfinder so that if I reacted in time when he took off, I would capture him in the center of the frame. Et voilà! I was successful getting tack sharp flight images in 11 percent of the images I took using this technique, a technique I will repeat when I photograph Hummingbirds again. And, I was happy that I was not dreaming.

A mature male Snowcap perches deep in the Rabo de Gato hedge, surrounded by twigs and branches. He was too fast for me when he flew out of his protected area and he didn’t spend much time feeding on the purple flowers on my side of the hedge. But I was quite pleased to see him on my second day at Rancho Bajo. And it just means I’ll have to return to Costa Rica to get flight shots of him.

Hummingbird photography is challenging but it can also be very rewarding. The challenge is keeping these tiny, fast-flying birds that can change directions instantaneously (hummingbirds are the only species that can fly backwards) in focus in the viewfinder without distractions in the background. We spent a few hours one morning at Rancho Bajo, an area down the road from our lodge where the elusive Snowcap (a Hummingbird without Hummingbird in its name) is often seen. On that day we saw a few female and immature male Snowcaps but not the star of the show, the mature male Snowcap. The hedge of Rabo de Gato (cat’s tail also called blue snakeweed) where the hummers perched and fed, was a busy mass of purple flowers and long stems that made it very difficult to follow the hummers as they worked their way through the criss-crossing stems and buzzedfrom blossom to blossom. When we returned to the same location a couple of days later, I decided to find a flower with an unobstructed background that, if a hummer fed at it, had the potential to make an excellent photograph. I focused on the flower and that gave me a reference point when I moved my lens to other views, always returning to my flower. Moose finally asked me to point out my flower and after that, when he announced hummer locations, Carol’s Flower was the reference point. The female Snowcap often got near it but then would suddenly change directions. Finally, as Moose called out blow by blow movement toward Carol’s Flower, there she was, feeding on my flower! I got several shots before she flew off. It was a good lesson in bird photography, to find a location that will make a good photograph (good background, perch, etc.) and that has the potential for a bird to actually go there. It is a technique I will use again. And, by the way, the mature male Snowcap finally made an appearance and he will appear in this space tomorrow.

When is a Hummingbird not a Hummingbird? When it’s a Snowcap or a Woodnymph or a Plumeleteer. Or, when it’s a Jacobin like this White-necked Jacobin I photographed in central Costa Rica last week. I hadn’t realized that what I think of as a Hummingbird can go by so many common names other than Hummingbird. There’s even the Emerald and the Mango. And, in some cases, there are multiples of each type, like the Striped-throated Hermit and the Green Hermit. We even saw a few that are actually called Hummingbirds like the Rufous-tailed Hummingbird. We saw and photographed all of these flying jewels during our week there. What a treat it was to be surrounded by these tiny, feisty, gorgeous birds, species we do not see in the Unites States.

Announcing its return to the nesting area, a Great Egret squawks as it descends into its territory in the Cottonwood trees in the rookery. I added the 1.4X teleconverter to the Z600PF telephoto lens because the activity in the nesting area seemed to be happening on the far side of the trees so with the 2X TC, the effective focal length was 1200mm. 

A Black Phoebe looks back toward me while perched on a twig in the green space between the shopping center and the Egret Rookery in Lincoln. The green background seems to be appropriate for Saint Patrick’s Day and I’m certain there must be a shamrock or two in that greenery. Since I am one quarter Irish, let me say Erin go bragh!

A Great Egret carries a small stick to its nest in the Cottonwood trees in the rookery.

An email I received a couple of days ago alerted me to a “Flash Mob at the Rookery” scheduled for Thursday morning. The photography club at Lincoln Hills organized an unexpected, last minute (hence, the flash mob) excursion to the Great Egret and Great Blue Heron rookery located right behind the Dollar Store a couple of blocks from my house. I had no idea a rookery was so close to me. Viewing was from the sidewalk directly behind the store. About a dozen photographers took advantage of the opportunity despite the chilly, windy morning. Most of the nests, some with eggs, some still under construction, were Great Egret nests but a couple of pairs of Great Blue Herons were building nests in the cottonwood trees with the egrets. It won’t be long before the trees will be leafed out and will keep activity at the rookery mostly obscured from view. Yesterday, the windy conditions kept the birds from flying as much as we were hoping for but there were still some great opportunities for flight shots.

A Great Egret spent quite a bit of time scratching itself late one morning in Great Isle, LA. It roosted on a barren tree with several other Great Egrets and White Ibis.

A couple of White Ibis appear to be parting ways on the beach in Grand Isle, LA. We were beach panning there and these were the only birds on the beach at that moment, quite a bit larger than the little shore birds that scurry across the sand that I’m used to photographing with my beach panning rig. My goal was to get both birds in focus at once and because one was slightly closer than the other, I had to close down my aperture to do that. I’d started at f/9 because I had the Nikon Z1.4x teleconverter attached to the Nikkor Z600PF f/6.3 lens. After a few tries, I succeeded in getting the eyes of both birds in focus at f/18.

A pair of White Ibis on the beach in Grand Isle, LA a couple of weeks ago were fishing in a small, shallow pool quite a distance from the shoreline. I’m not sure how long it was since the pool had formed on that beach but quite a few tiny minnows or some other small fish were apparently trapped. The tiny fish were being harvested one by one as the Ibis waded back and forth swishing their beaks. This little fish survived this encounter after the Ibis dropped it as it tried to maneuver the fish into its beak. I can’t say it escaped to swim another day because the pool was quite small and the Ibis, joined by a Greater Yellow Legs, seemed to have quite voracious appetites and they were quite persistent in their pursuit of their next meal.

Laughing Gulls were everywhere in Grand Isle, LA week before last, especially on the docks. The laughing call of these gulls is a familiar sound around the Gulf of Mexico. They may be named after their laughing call but the gull on the piling is not laughing as another gull, in breeding plumage, tries to descend onto the same piling. The one gull stood firm and the gull in the air kept going, landing on the next piling down.

As the sun rose above my neighbor’s rooftop and streamed through my kitchen shutters yesterday morning, I noticed that the sunbeam created a marvelous backlight to something on my kitchen table. That was all it took for me to jump up, grab some scissors, and dash out the front door to clip three miniature daffodils blooming on the walkway. I used my ZMC50 macro lens, set the Nikon Z8’s image size to square (what I almost always use for flower photos) and with the macro’s shallow depth of focus, I stopped down the lens so all of the petals would be in focus. Because of the slow shutter speed, I propped the camera on top of a stack of cookbooks that were handy to grab. The backlit petals rimming the slightly darker corona make that center cup appear to be almost orange. I equate daffodils with spring. My new garden is filled with blooming daffodils, and I thank the previous owner of this house for planting so many. Yes, spring is on the way!

Double-crested Cormorants are often seen perched on pilings with their wings spread. This one did a little preening before fully stretching out its wings. Although their feathers are all black, their eyes are a startling teal color. We photographed Cormorants, Brown Pelicans, and various Gulls on a commercial fishing dock in Grand Isle, Louisiana last week.

While I was laying on the beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana last week (no I wasn’t sunbathing, I was photographing birds with my camera and telephoto lens on a panning plate attached to a Frisbee on the sand) I photographed two types of shorebirds, Willets and my favorite, Sanderlings, seen above. What I love about Sanderlings, a small bird half the size of the Willets I photographed, is their attitude. They seem fearless. They are almost constantly on the move, scurrying up and down the beach to the edge of the surf and then suddenly dashing away from the water. They stop briefly to excavate a savory morsel from the sand then take off, zigzagging down the beach. It is always a fun challenge for me to photograph Sanderlings and then this one actually stopped momentarily as if in a face-off with me, a “here’s looking at you,” moment. I had a smile on my face the entire time I watched this bird. It was only a couple o minutes but it kept stopping to preen a feather, then it raced a foot or two, stopped again, and preened another feather. It was a very special few moments and then it raced out of range of my camera and disappeared from view.

It was late in the afternoon at a marina on Grand Isle, LA. A Brown Pelican, perched on a piling, watched for its next meal in the water below. The lowering sun created sparkles in the water behind the Pelican and the resulting bokeh made a great backdrop for the silhouetted bird.

When I saw this Willet walking toward me on the beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana, with the feathers ruffled a bit from the breeze, I immediately thought of a model on a runway, strutting her stuff. Male and female Willets have similar plumage so I don’t have any idea whether this is a “she” but “she” looks like a runway model to me. I love being able to get this perspective of a bird on the beach by laying on the sand with my camera and telephoto lens on a panning plate inside a Frisbee. The same image taken from a tripod, only a few feet higher, would not have been at all the same.