Dave,

You might call yourself an amateur photographer, but your pictures are better than many I've seen in hummingbird books!

They are breathtaking!

Dave:

Those were truly lovely photos, thank you so much for sharing them! This year more than even we have had a large bird presence in our yard (hummingbirds and many other kinds that I am learning to identify) and I have so enjoyed their company I'm trying to educate myself on how to make my yard a happy place to hang out that provides habitat, shelter and food.

Your pictures just jump off the page. Thanks again.

Kathryn

Hi Dave! Its good to see you over here too! What awesome pictures! I have hummers for the first time this year and I am loving them! What kind of hummer is that? Is it a female ruby?

Diane

Hi Diane

Yes, I post a picture or two over here every once in a while but there seems to be a lot more interest and activity at the network54 Hummingbird forum, so I visit there more often.

There is a bit of a lull around our house as far as pictures of the bluebirds are concerned. They are molting and are absolutely nasty looking, and the yellow jackets are giving them fits around the meal worm feeders, so they don't stick around very long when they do come.

We also have Carolina wrens and song sparrows that stay with us year round so now the population of the wrens is about a dozen and the song sparrows about six or eight. Since they stay in the yard all day and are small enough to get into the cage, it is hard for the bluebirds to find worms when they show up. They usually give me a dirty look and shove off.

I am buying 10,000 meal worms every two weeks now. My wife won't allow me to keep them in either of "her" refrigerators, (she has a second one in the garage) so I bought a 19 cu. ft. fridge and put it in my office in the basement. Nothing in it but worms and Pepsi's. Only trouble is it takes me a bit longer to get down there and out to the feeders and most often the blues are gone by then. So the wrens and song sparrows, and too often the blasted starlings gobble them up.

In the meantime, I am shooting pictures of the the hummers like crazy. I know they will be gone in a few weeks. Most days I take as many as 500 shots -- most of them I don't even review before I transfer them to a 120 GB portable hard drive that I use exclusively for storing bird pictures. I know many are redundant and most are just so-so, but when the hummers are gone, they're gone. Maybe in the winter I will find time to sort through and post some of them. People will likely appreciate seeing them then too.

Yes, I think these pics are of a female ruby. Rubys are all we have here on the east coast but they are so pretty.

Take care and keep up your good work with the blues. I enjoy reading your posts.

Dave

Dave; I LOVE viewing your pictures, please keep posting ;)

Hi Dave--I agree those are very good pics and I have seen other pics on this forum that are very good too, I was wondering what kind and how expensive a camera you use. I borrowed a digital from my sister but the pics arent as clear and the pics in flight are blurred on the wings. Her camera is a sony mavica 2pixel.

Dave, I am having such fun with the Hummers! I am out of mealies right now, so I had not seen the blues in a few days (sorry Hummer fans)bear with us, but I have loved seeing these precious little awesome birds (first time ever to attract them this year!) fight over feeders, perch on the Shepherd's hook outside my kitchen window window, and watch them feed, and then the incredible experience of having one hover a foot in front of my face as I was rehanging a feeder!

But I did see the blues again today as I was cleaning out the bird bath...I looked up and two of the last fledglings were peeking over the edge of the roof at me and wondering where their mealies were! 10,000...wow! I can't imagine ordering that many at a time! What a yard you must have! My blues are used to me feeding them twice a day, in the morning and evening, and a lot of times, they are not here in the morning...

On the blue bird forum, those who live farther north were talking about how many Hummers they had right now, which means they will soon be moving farther and farther south, so I am wondering if that means that the numbers here in Oklahoma will increase in September. I wonder how long they stay here.

Anyway, once again, great photos...be sure and tell them what photography equipment you use! One of these days....I will have to save up for what you have!

Diane

Hi Steve

As Diane implied, I happen to have some very nice cameras but you can get very nice results with some of the more reasonably priced super zoom cameras. For example, Sony and Panasonic make several models with 10 or 12x zooms that produce very acceptable pictures. Two megapixels is a bit small but a camera with four or five MP should produce an image large enough to allow you to crop a bit. The thing to look for is the delay between when you press the trigger and when the shutter fires.

I have four digital SLR cameras, including two Canon EOS 1D Mark II's, a 20D and a D30. The Mark II's are very nice but VERY expensive. They are mostly used by sports photographers but work very nicey for bird photography, especially these fast moving little hummers.

I also have a number of Canon telephoto lenses, including the 500mm f/4 and the 300mm f/2.8. These lenses cost even more than the cameras, but they really make the difference. The following shots were taken in late afternoon light using the 300mm lens from about 10 feet away.

Dave

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Dave,

Not only is it the camera and lense, it's the photographer as well! Great, great job!

Thanks Dave for the info on the cameras , I suspected as much. I was trying the macro part for real closeups thru the window, but the wings came out blurred , which another person on this forum stated using the macro part of his camera. A picture says a thousand words, as yours do, but the cameras are rather pricey,maybe I can get a good one off ebay. Thanks again for the info Dave

Your pictures are awesome. I look forward to seeing some you post in the winter when we are missing our little birds.:) These are some of the best pictures I have seen.

Amazing pictures!

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Dave would never tell you this out of modesty, but if you guys like this sampling of his pics, he has a website where he posts not only Hummer pics, but some awesome pics of other specises, such as my other favorite the blues...he may get on to me for this, but it is obviously one of his passions and his page is worth the time...there is a picture of a Carolina wren after its bath that will make you laugh out loud...so Dave, don't kill me, but I suppose if you didn't want people to browse your awesome pictures, you wouldn't put them there! The 2nd question I have is do you sell any of your prints? Okay...I am providing the link below, so enjoy this man's gifted bird photography that he chooses to share with us! One evening, my family and I clicked on all the pictures and oohed and awed and laughed out loud at some of them! It was fun! Keep 'em coming!

Thanks for sharing your gift Dave! Your pictures make me smile!

Here is a link that might be useful: UncleDave's photo gallery

Hey Dave,

Do you use flash to get the wings stopped or high ISO and pure shutter speed? (Takes an awfully fast shutter to stop those wings.)

Just curious. Good shots althouhg they appear to be fairly extreme crops. Just judging by the noise in the BG. Not so much the first two, but the second two.

Keep up the good work!

Hi Greenthumb

The first two images were shot at 1/1600 and 1/2000, using 700mm and ISO 1600 and 1250, respectively. The last two were shot at 1/2000 and 1/3200, both at ISO 1600.

Admittedly the third picture is very grainy. It was originally a throwaway. I was shooting another hummer and this guy was in the background so I cropped it and sharpened it (probably too much) and threw away the rest of the picture.

I try to get as close as I can to the birds. Usually I get within 15 feet or so. I never use flash. It alters the color, especially the green back feathers of hummers, in a way I don't like.

I always shoot offhand and almost always use auto focus. That is OK when they are perched or when they are hoovering but following them in the air or when they are fighting or chasing each other is a real challenge. My camera does focus very quickly and has almost no delay between the trigger and the shutter response. Still, it's mostly luck when you get a really good one.

I do crop all my shots as much as I can before I post them. If it's a picture of a bird I like to show the bird and not a lot of sky. If the bird happens to be doing something interesting, like a a scarlet tanger picking a cherry from a tree, I back off and show you a bit of the tree too.

I guess it's a bit like being an artist. I do it mostly for me and hope others will like it too. If they don't, that's too bad but there are lots of other artists out there.

One thing you give up when you shoot up close and wide open is depth of field. Still, even if part of the subject is out of focus, I prefer that way to using a flash that would probably burn out the closest part.

For example, here is a shot where both of their bills are in focus (and not much more) Still, you can tell at a glance what is going on.

Dave

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Wonderful photos!