{"id":41751,"date":"2016-08-27T05:02:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-27T11:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=41751"},"modified":"2016-08-27T07:21:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-27T13:21:01","slug":"calliope-hummingbird-in-a-natural-setting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/27\/calliope-hummingbird-in-a-natural-setting\/","title":{"rendered":"Calliope Hummingbird In A Natural Setting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have fewer opportunities with hummingbirds than many bird photographers because I won’t photograph them at setups (or flash them). I much prefer a natural setting, natural light and behaviors that haven’t been coerced.<\/p>\n

My chances with hummingbirds mostly come when they’re feeding on nectar\u00a0of\u00a0Rocky Mountain beeplant but this year beeplant has been very difficult to find. I’ve been watching a\u00a0small patch of it\u00a0since it started blooming recently but haven’t seen any hummingbirds there.<\/p>\n

Until yesterday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"calliope<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,\u00a0not baited, set up or flashed<\/strong><\/p>\n

A single\u00a0Calliope Hummingbird was at the beeplant for about 10 seconds and I managed two shots I like fairly well. I wish I’d been slightly closer and that it’s tail wasn’t cut off by the flower but I like the flight posture, the feeding behavior\u00a0and the frozen wings at this high shutter speed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"calliope<\/p>\n

1\/5000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,\u00a0not baited, set up or flashed<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the next frame I caught the hummer as it flew over the flower it had been feeding on.<\/p>\n

Notice that the bird has a bit of debris on its bill. At first I didn’t pay much attention to it but then I remembered that many hummingbirds get their protein from hawking small flying insects out of the air and that made me wonder…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"calliope<\/p>\n

So I very heavily cropped (5% of the original image)\u00a0another\u00a0photo of the same bird while it was perched far away from me and sure enough, the “debris” turned out to be several very\u00a0small insects\u00a0clinging to its bill. Right now the morning air in this area is filled with hordes of tiny flying insects (they’re not biting gnats) that are so small that I only notice them when they try to land on my windshield and slide down the slippery glass like\u00a0miniscule bits of fire ash.<\/p>\n

The bird made no attempt to eat the insects or clean them off its bill that I’m aware of.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – My skills at identifying hummingbirds, particularly females and immatures,\u00a0are quite\u00a0limited so if this isn’t a Calliope Hummingbird please correct me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Late addendum: I’m adding this more loosely cropped version of the last photo for a better look at the tail and wingtips\u00a0in case it might help with positive ID of the bird, one way or another…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"calliope<\/p>\n

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

I have fewer opportunities with hummingbirds than many bird photographers because I won’t photograph them at setups (or flash them). I much prefer a natural setting, natural light and behaviors that haven’t been coerced.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41752,"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":[3,334,392,1678],"tags":[31,3076,1644,136,1263,146,3078,2318,3077],"class_list":["post-41751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-hummingbirds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-calliope-hummingbird","tag-eating-insects","tag-feeding","tag-flash","tag-flight","tag-rocky-mountain-beeplant","tag-setup","tag-stellula-calliope"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/calliope-hummingbird-1352-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aRp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41751","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=41751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}