Female Black-chinned Hummingbird Nectaring on Trumpet Vine

Extracting nectar from a tubular trumpet vine flower isn’t easy, even if you have a very long bill.

 

This is the most productive portion of my trumpet vine on the side of my house. I don’t photograph hummingbirds at my feeder, so this vine has always been my go-to source for hummers in a more natural setting.  But photographing hummingbirds at the vine has been far more difficult than usual this summer, for three reasons.

• This year the vine was heavily damaged by a late spring frost, so it didn’t flower until much later than usual. No flowers, no hummers. Until a few days ago I didn’t think there’d be any flowers to speak of all summer. But it’s finally making up for lost time.
• I have far fewer hummers in my yard this summer than I remember ever having before (possibly because of the damage to the vine?). At most there have been two pairs of Black-chinned Hummingbirds coming to my feeders and one of the females has staked out my trumpet vine as her personal flower patch and she simply will not allow any of the others to approach it. Which certainly limits the possibilities for this bird photographer. I’ve still never seen a male at the vine, though they use my nearby feeder every day. She’s got those guys intimidated.
• It’s been insufferably hot around here. Two days ago Salt Lake City hit 109° F., shattering the all-time previous record by 2°. It’s been so hot that any hummers feeding on the trumpet vine nearly always stay on the back side of the vine, in the deep morning shade where I can’t photograph them.

But a couple of days ago I discovered that if I get out there right after sunrise, when it’s still relatively cool, the dominant female hummer sometimes feeds on ‘my side’ of the vine where there’s light and I have a chance at decent photos. The light is usually dappled and filtered through trees but it’s infinitely better than on the shaded side, so it’s the best chance I have.

 

 

These first eight photos are part of a series of short bursts I took over a period of perhaps eight seconds in early morning two days ago as the dominant female was feeding on a trumpet vine flower. The filtered light was only marginal but I still think they turned out pretty well.

Image techs for most of these photos are at or near 1/2000, f/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc

She’s most interested in the top flower. Parts of two black ants are visible on the bottom two flowers. One of them will become more prominent in later photos. The other one will disappear.

 

 

She begins to dive into the flower.

 

 

Her feet are about to land on and grasp the flower below but…

 

 

she seems to instinctively know that the flowers probably can’t support her weight so she continues to beat her wings as she attempts to feed.

 

 

Apparently she couldn’t reach the nectar so she backed out and…

 

 

tried again.

 

 

This time she went so far into the flower that her beating wings began to strike the flower’s petals.

 

 

So she took a chance that the flower would support her weight and stopped beating her wings. It worked. Almost half of her disappeared within the flower. This is why hummingbirds have such long bills.

I don’t have a dramatic photo to conclude this series that’s any good. After she was through feeding, she backed out of the flower, turned 90° in a millisecond, and…

 

 

flew off. But the photo was soft.

 

 

This is my setup for photographing hummers at the trumpet vine from my dilapidated side deck that I almost never use. I have almost an hour in the very early morning with dappled light on the vine while I’m sitting in the shade, coffee within reach.

Even if hummers don’t show up, and they often don’t, there are worse ways to spend my time.

Ron

 

Some “incidentals” while I was attempting to photograph hummingbirds the last few days.

 

 

The trumpet vine flowers are crawling with pollinators, including several species of bees, wasps and ants. For some reason I never see butterflies on the vine.

 

 

A Western Kingbird that landed on my friend and neighbor Shane’s nearby tree. I only include the photo because it’s the first Western Kingbird I’ve ever seen in my neighborhood.

 

 

This is Bandito paying me a visit. I’ve never seen him on the side deck before so the anthropomorphist in me likes to think he just came by to tell me good morning. In reality he was probably just checking on my whereabouts before going off to steal more of my bird seed.

 

Neighbor Shane and I have both been seeing a large rat in our yards so I placed a rat trap beneath my deck (where squirrels don’t go). Several mornings ago while I was photographing hummers, I heard the trap go off.

The photo below is of the dead male rat in the trap. It isn’t gory but if you don’t want to see it, scroll no further. You’ve been warned.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s the biggest, baddest, fattest rat I’ve ever seen around here. He’s now fertilizing the back of my garden.