{"id":169324,"date":"2025-08-01T06:06:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=169324"},"modified":"2025-08-01T09:11:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T15:11:28","slug":"hummers-galore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/01\/hummers-galore\/","title":{"rendered":"Hummers Galore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hummingbirds are finally showing up at my trumpet vine in good numbers.<\/p>\n

Each of the following photos was taken at my trumpet vine in the early morning over the last four days. I have a brief window of about 40 minutes, beginning when the sun comes up over the mountains (at about 6:50 AM), when there’s good (but very warm) light on the vine’s flowers. After that, it’s touch and go for another hour or so as I get filtered light on the vine through my neighbor’s huge elm trees. So my shutter speed can vary tremendously. In these photos my shutter speed ranged from 1\/8000 to 1\/400.<\/p>\n

Most of the hummers in these photos are female Black-chinned Hummingbirds. For some reason, the male black-chinned come to my feeder but they very rarely visit the trumpet vine. There may be a few juvenile Broad-tailed Hummingbirds in the mix but I have a hard time identifying the juvies.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

The backgrounds in these photos vary a lot – from the flowers and greenery of the trumpet vine to the various colors and textures of my neighbor’s mostly shaded house, yard and trees across the street. I kind of like the variety, since the color of all those trumpet vine flowers varies very little.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the flowers are out of focus and…<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

sometimes they’re sharp. I’m usually OK with it either way, as long as the bird is sharp.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Here I like her raised rump feathers and the transparency of her wingtip. I’m less fond of the bright, dead twig behind the flowers.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

The hummers had so many flowers to choose from they sometimes seemed overwhelmed by the choice. This bird hovered here for a long time as she tried to make up her mind. There are many dozens of flower clusters similar to this one on the vine.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 1000, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I like this hummer’s bent posture.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t get this angle on a hummingbird very often. Or a background this color.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

With that potbelly, I’m not sure she needs more nectar.<\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I often get photos of hummers that have noticeable amounts of pollen on their bills or foreheads, but this little lady has so much pollen on the top of her head it almost looks like she’s wearing a yellow hat.<\/p>\n

She knew it was there too, and she didn’t like it. When she took off from this flower she…<\/p>\n

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1\/1000, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

shook the pollen off. I didn’t even know she’d done it until I looked at my photos at home. I wish I’d had more shutter speed but I was lucky to document the behavior.<\/p>\n

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1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 1250, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Taking off after an intruder.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I finally saw a Rufous Hummingbird again. This bird is the first rufous I’ve seen in my yard in a little over two years.<\/p>\n

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1\/400, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll close with a bird I call Happy Hummer because, well she looks happy to me. It’s pretty unusual for me to photograph a hummer with its bill open this far.<\/p>\n

At this incredibly slow shutter speed (for a hummingbird), her wings are just a blur. I’m just glad that the rest of her is sharp.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

Hummingbirds are finally showing up at my trumpet vine in good numbers. (12 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169334,"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":[334,3531,392,3512],"tags":[2174,7870,7869,2173,5770,5911,311],"class_list":["post-169324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-black-chinned-hummingbirds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-rufous-hummingbirds","tag-black-chinned-hummingbird","tag-hummingbird-shaking-pollen-off-of-her-head","tag-pollen-on-hummingbird","tag-rufous-hummingbird","tag-shutter-speed-for-hummingbirds-in-flight","tag-trumpet-vine","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/black-chinned-hummingbird-9885b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-I32","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169324","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=169324"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169376,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169324\/revisions\/169376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}