{"id":169034,"date":"2025-07-08T06:17:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T12:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=169034"},"modified":"2025-07-08T16:46:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T22:46:33","slug":"female-black-chinned-hummingbird-at-my-trumpet-vine-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/08\/female-black-chinned-hummingbird-at-my-trumpet-vine-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Black-chinned Hummingbird At My Trumpet Vine"},"content":{"rendered":"

And dumping a load.<\/p>\n

In the last week I’ve spent many hours at my trumpet vine trying to photograph hummingbirds, with almost no success.<\/p>\n

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This is my trumpet vine, growing on my chimney on the east side of my house. This year it has an abundance of flowers but they were late blooming, probably because I gave it a serious pruning early in the spring.<\/p>\n

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Pollinators, including at least four species of bees, are drawn to it in droves. But this year, hummingbirds – not so much. I’m seeing fewer hummers than I have in past years and those I do have come to my hummingbird feeder in my back yard but they’ve been mostly avoiding my trumpet vine and I don’t know why.<\/p>\n

But I’ve been persisting. In the last week I’ve spent at least 10 hours sitting on my deck in front of my tripod, waiting for hummers to show up. In that amount of time I’ve only had a hummer in my viewfinder twice and I didn’t like any of those photos.<\/p>\n

But yesterday morning my stubbornness finally paid off when I got…<\/p>\n

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two series of photos of this female Black-chinned Hummingbird feeding on trumpet vine nectar. In this series the flower cluster she was feeding on was a little past its prime.<\/p>\n

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In this shot she was far enough away from those same flowers to allow me to crop them out.<\/p>\n

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Here I like her horizontal flight posture. And her apparent determination. In this series the background was pretty cluttered but a few seconds earlier I managed to get a series of photos of her with a…<\/p>\n

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much cleaner background.<\/p>\n

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In this shot the flowers are a little sharper.<\/p>\n

In the last photo below she isn’t very sharp, but I think you’ll understand why I’m including it anyway.<\/p>\n

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In the past I’ve photographed hummingbirds pooping several times but I’ve never captured this much of it. She’s dumping quite a load for such a tiny bird. That’s a small, out of focus bee at upper left.<\/p>\n

As in most birds, hummingbird poop can consist of water, nitrogenous wastes and dark, undigestible insect parts (hummers do eat some tiny insects for the protein they contain). But hummers feed primarily on watery flower nectar so their poop is mostly sweet-smelling water. This time her poop appeared to be entirely water.<\/p>\n

Sweet-smelling poop, now there’s an idea.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n