![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/black-chinned-hummingbird-3098-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-chinned-hummingbird-3098-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nAnd the main reason birds show up in my garden? Amaranth.<\/p>\n
Normally I don’t photograph birds in my garden and I rarely post photos of yard birds to Feathered Photography. Two days ago the wildfire smoke was so bad it hurt to breathe outside and bird photography was mostly a waste of time so that evening I made the decision to stay home yesterday. But when dawn broke much of the smoke had unexpectedly cleared out and since it was too late to head to one of my usual birding destinations I decided to try my luck in my mixed vegetable\/flower garden.<\/p>\n
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1\/200, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender<\/em><\/p>\n The best luck I had was with this female Black-chinned Hummingbird resting on a leaf stalk of one of my amaranth plants. She isn’t quite tack sharp (although she’s close) but with me that’s what happens when I’m shooting with my shaky hands at a shutter speed of only 1\/200th of a second.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just look at that pollen load on top of her bill. I do have a hummingbird feeder in my yard but it isn’t close to my garden and she’d obviously been getting much of her nectar elsewhere, thus the pollen.<\/p>\n The light in her eye illustrates one of the reasons I don’t photograph birds in my garden very often. If you look closely at the reflection you can see the sun coming up over my grapevine-covered fence. After that the sun has a clear shot to my garden for only about an hour in the early morning before it’s blocked by the leaves of my neighbor’s trees that can be seen in the reflection directly above the sun. For the rest of the morning my garden is in shade and after that the light is too harsh for quality bird photography. In the evening my garden is totally blocked by shade trees.<\/p>\n So more often than not my choice is to photograph garden birds in the shade or in harsh light.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most species I get in my yard are the common ones, including House Finches. And they all seem to love the amaranth plants as a source of both cover and food. This female with a wayward feather was using the amaranths as cover in-between food foraging trips to their seed heads high above her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n An American Goldfinch doing the same thing. At least I had a spot of light on this one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Amaranth produces massive amounts of tiny seeds (up to half a million from a single plant) that don’t have to be hulled so birds love them, especially the House Finches but others too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here’s another finch with red debris on her bill from feeding on the seeds.<\/p>\n Thirty years ago I didn’t even know what amaranth was but a neighbor gave me a few tiny seeds and suggested I might like them in my garden for their colorful flower heads and their tendency to grow very tall which makes them an eye-catcher and partially blocks the neighbor’s view if nothing else.<\/p>\n I kept those seeds in my shed for almost ten years before I planted a few of them and amaranth plants have been coming up as volunteers ever since. I rototill most of them under but always leave a few, in pretty random places in my garden, because I’ve learned to like them a lot.<\/p>\n And so do the birds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cell phone photo<\/em><\/p>\n This was my shooting situation yesterday morning in the hour of decent light I had. There’s a funky color cast because of the smoke on the low horizon that early in the morning.<\/p>\n Hummingbirds sometimes feed on the zinnias (getting either nectar or tiny insects or both) but they often use the very tall amaranth in back as cover, as evidenced by the first photo above. One day I’m hoping to photograph a hummingbird next to a ripe tomato (tomatoes are on the right), if nothing else for the uniqueness of the photo. It almost happened yesterday but no cigar.<\/p>\n That silly frog-planter under the zucchini isn’t really my style but an Honors Biology student and her mother gave it to me decades ago so I can’t bring myself to part with it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cell phone photo<\/em><\/p>\n Those amaranth are incredible, some of them are only a few inches short of 11′ tall (yes, I measured one of them yesterday.) The patio chair in the deep shade is hard to see but I put it there for scale.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n OK, that’s probably way more than you wanted to know about my garden but I wanted to be completely transparent about the situation when I’m photographing birds in my yard and posting them here. Depending on your definition some might say bird photos taken in my yard have been baited or set up so I wanted to be as up front as I possibly could.<\/p>\n Due to circumstances beyond my control I may be posting more bird photos taken in my yard in the coming weeks and for me full disclosure is vital.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And the main reason birds show up in my garden? Amaranth.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/black-chinned-hummingbird-3098-large-crop-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-chinned-hummingbird-3098-large-crop-ron-dudley\\"")
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