{"id":101284,"date":"2021-08-12T05:56:48","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T11:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=101284"},"modified":"2021-08-12T06:41:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T12:41:29","slug":"hummingbird-wars-in-the-mountains-yesterday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/12\/hummingbird-wars-in-the-mountains-yesterday-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"Hummingbird Wars In The Mountains Yesterday Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wildfire smoke finally subsided enough for me to get up into the mountains yesterday. Once again hummingbirds were on the agenda and this time they were really feeling their oats…err, nectar.<\/p>\n

As readers know I’m more bird photographer than birder and when it comes to female and juvenile hummingbirds my ID skills leave a lot to be desired. So rather than risk getting it wrong I won’t even make an attempt to ID these hummers as to species. Usually in this area of the mountains I see either Black-chinned or Broad-tailed Hummingbirds so I suspect these hummers are females of one or both of those species but I’d appreciate conclusive ID’s from my viewers if anyone would care to take a stab at it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

When I first spotted the bird on the right perched on a branch near the bottom of a slope below me I didn’t even notice the bird on the left, even though they were close enough to each other for me to get both of them in the frame. But in this shot we can see enough of both birds to know that they’re already staring each other down.<\/p>\n

Soon after this photo was taken things got real.<\/p>\n

In order to avoid awkwardness in telling the story I’m going to presume both birds are adult females and name them. Given my ancestral roots in English Tudor history (and the name of my first ex-wife) I’m choosing to call the bird on the left Elizabeth. That’s Mary on the right.<\/em><\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Elizabeth (Liz) made the first move. She circled around and attacked Mary who was still perched.<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

It looks to me like Mary got a poke in the armpit during the ruckus.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Mary beat a quick retreat but she circled around and…<\/p>\n

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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

attacked Liz who was now perched on the same spot Mary had been.<\/p>\n

Given my relatively slow shutter speed (for hummers at least) and the fact that I was trying to keep two incredibly fast birds in frame and in focus, it goes without saying that I clipped a lot of body parts and often at least one of the birds was soft. But even some of those shots helped to tell the story, including this one.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Both birds did a lot of posturing but I’m pretty sure they made contact more than once. And yes, during fights hummingbirds are sometimes injured or even killed, typically by impaling.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

At this point the fight is more posturing than anything and eventually…<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

the fight turned out to be a draw. Both birds settled on the perch and glared at each other for a while before Mary, on the right, took off first, eventually followed by Liz.<\/p>\n

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I’m more than pleased by how well several of these photos turned out, including this last one and #6. Usually when I try to photograph hummingbird wars I’m lucky to get even one of the combatants sharp and in frame but this time I had much better luck.<\/p>\n

My old friend Murphy must have been on vacation yesterday morning..<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: I certainly won’t claim that I didn’t lose track of which bird was which and at some point call them by the wrong names. I did the best I could under the circumstances.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wildfire smoke finally subsided enough for me to get up into the mountains yesterday. Once again hummingbirds were on the agenda and this time they were really feeling their oats…err, nectar.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,3531,4082,394],"tags":[5895,146,5896,2868,311],"class_list":["post-101284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-chinned-hummingbirds","category-broad-tailed-hummingbirds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","tag-fighting-hummingbirds","tag-flight","tag-hummingbird-identification","tag-posturing","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/hummingbird-wars-5510-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qlC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101284"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101328,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101284\/revisions\/101328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}