Backyard

Dennis September 2, 2010 4 Comments

Backyard Hummingbirds

After my trip to Costa Rica I planned to again try my hand at hummingbird photography in my yard. In past years, many hummingbirds, all Rubythroated, would visit my feeders. Usually one would arrive even before the feeder was up, hovering in front of the window location where it is usually mounted. Clearly that bird had been here before. This year was different. This year, we only had one male most of the time, with a second one showing up occasionally, and we had only three females. The male dominated the feeder until I set up a second one out of sight of the other. Now the male guards one feeder, and the three females seem to spend more time chasing each other around the other feeder than eating.

After several weeks of photographing, I haven’t been able to catch the male’s gorget fully lit up. Most captures that are a side view of the male results in dark, almost black gorget feathers. There always seems to be a dark patch of red gorget that never lights up. It’s very difficult to catch the throat lit up, and only seems to happen if the bird is facing the camera, but even then, there’s a patch in the center that doesn’t fully light up. I’ll have to experiment more with light placement to see if I can get better results. Up to now the two front lights have been to either side of the flower. Perhaps I need to place one below and directly in front of the bird. In the past, I’ve used a camera mounted flash with a BetterBeamer to trigger the other flashes. That may provide enough direct light, if lack of direct front light is the cause of the dark feathers.

I’ve been using the Canon 7D with the 500mm f4 Is lens since the birds were very wary of me being nearby. Now they are more comfortable with me there and I’ve been using the 100-400 zoom lens. . I can’t rotate my camera for vertical compositions because the built in flash controller of the 7D will not see all the remote flashes if I do so. So I’ve been taking images with less zoom with the intent of cropping for vertical presentation. The portrait images were taken this way.

There are not many more days to photograph hummingbirds; the males will leave soon and the females a couple of weeks later.

Dennis October 3, 2009

Bee Assassin

This Bee Assassin stayed on one of two flowers during a four week period in September. The first images are in the nymph stage, and gradually transformed into the adult form over the first two weeks. I visited the flower often to see if the bug would catch something to eat. Near the end of the fourth week I was fortunate to see, and photograph, the insect eating a bee.

Assassin bugs get their name from the way they attack their victims, inflicting sharp stabs with their beak. Their front most legs have powerful muscles to grab and hold their prey while the body fluids are sucked out. The bug pounces on bees and other pollinating insects. After grabbing the prey, the insect thrusts its cutting beak in to the victim’s back, injects an immobilizing digestive agent, then sucks out the body juices.

For these images I used a Canon 40D camera with a Sigma 150mm macro lens and a Canon MT-24EX twin light.

Dennis August 15, 2009

Turkey and Poults

This spring the male turkeys that visited my yard spent a lot of time displaying. Well, it must have worked (at least for one). A female started visiting to feed her nine poults (turkey chicks) at our bird feeders. The little round birds were so cute when they first arrived in early June. They were very skittish and the mother did not allow any approach, even when we went out to throw some seed on the ground, so the first few photos are from the kitchen window. Normally, the adults stay within six to eight feet when we walk about the yard, especially if we are bringing seed. As the poults got older, the mother did get comfortable with us bringing seed and rarely moved more than six feet out of our way, and would start running for the seed before we’d finished throwing it. The image of the single poult was taken on August 1, and is just about two months old.

When young, the poults would occasionally hide under the mother’s belly for warmth or protection. You can see a couple sets of small legs. There are five poults under the mother.