![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/rufous-hummingbird-1587-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"rufous-hummingbird-1587-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nThese photos really brought home for me the incredible wing speed of hummingbirds.<\/p>\n
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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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 I photographed this Rufous Hummingbird four days ago\u00a0as it\u00a0was feeding on the nectar of wild\u00a0Rocky Mountain Bee Plant.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, 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 This is the next shot in the burst. It’s one of my favorites from the two mornings I spent with hummingbirds (and sphinx moths on one day)\u00a0at this patch of\u00a0bee plant. I like the wing position, the clean background and the sharpness of both bird and flower. Looking closely we see that the bill is partially\u00a0covered with pollen.<\/p>\n Since these were consecutive\u00a0photos in a burst, at first (and without\u00a0really thinking about it)\u00a0I presumed that they were of the same wing-beat cycle (silly me!) – that there had been no\u00a0beats\u00a0in-between the two shots. But then I wondered about that\u00a0and did a little figuring…<\/p>\n My camera fires 10 shots per second in burst mode. According to the National Park Service the average North American hummingbird\u00a0beats its wings 53 times per second (it’s really more a rotation than a\u00a0beat which makes that speed even more remarkable). So in the time it\u00a0took\u00a0me to fire off these two shots the hummingbird\u00a0likely completed 5+\u00a0beat cycles and I missed 4 of them between the first and second photo!<\/p>\n I find that to be remarkable – partly because the sound of my shutter going off is so fast it\u00a0reminds me of a firing machine gun so it’s hard for me to\u00a0visualize that many\u00a0wing beats between clicks from a bird. If you’re interested in seeing and hearing a burst from my camera in action here’s a clip<\/a> – the fastest burst starts at about 30 seconds into the clip but\u00a0the burst rate\u00a0can be set at different speeds.<\/p>\n And some\u00a0hummers are even faster – up to 80 wing\u00a0beats per second for the Amethyst Woodstar Hummingbird<\/a>. I can’t even imagine ever getting any still images of this little dynamo in flight as it feeds on nectar – it just doesn’t spend enough time at each flower to ever get focus lock on it. I think any bird photographers who watch\u00a0the second\u00a0clip will agree (feeding on flowers\u00a0begins at 32 seconds into the clip).<\/p>\n It’s no wonder we need incredibly\u00a0fast shutter speeds to get hummingbird wings sharp!<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" These photos really brought home for me the incredible wing speed of hummingbirds.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/rufous-hummingbird-1588-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"rufous-hummingbird-1588-ron-dudley\\"")
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