Finally!! First Hummer of the Season

[Fred Garvin]

It took almost 2 weeks but I finally got my first hummer:



This female Black-Chinned is a good sign, perhaps a male will come along. We really only have 2 here, the Black-Chinned and Ruby Throats. Bad news is I've had female Black-Chinned before and they are, like most hummers, very territorial and aggressive to interlopers. She's taken up roost in a nearby Red-Tip Photinia, zooming back and forth. Hopefully she'll allow a male access. Their plumage is striking in the sunshine. Now I can get setup to take some good pictures of her/them!

 

[dirkclod]

Nice. We have just started getting them here and have 4 feeders we keep loaded. Talk about a suger bill not to mention bird seed feeders. Wife’s hobby. Not to take away from your picture
i sat a cheap gopro knockoff up 3 years ago and this is how we get
them.

 

[BigAl07]

Thanks guys for sharing. We are putting our FIRST HB feeder up tomorrow. Well actually we had it up last year but didn't see a single bird... Last fall realized that our "Fake Snakes" on the handrails next to the HB feeder might have kept them away....

 

[Fred Garvin]

I use the 4:1 ratio and change out every other day (2 day limit)...each bottle holds 1/2c, so 1/2c water and 2T sugar is my mix.

No worries on the pic...its a tossser. I just did a quick preset on the exposure and focus trap, so when I saw her I jumped up and snapped it, handheld and through the glass of my back window. To get the wings somewhat stopped I set at 2000 and had to bump ISO to 1000 to get it proper. So, there's a TON of noise in it and the focus was on the feeder rather than the bird. Crapload of CA in it as well. To get an actual acceptable image I'll setup a tripod, get the ISO down to get rid of that noise, focus on the bird and remote trigger the shutter and fill flash.

At least I'll "start" with that....

@BigAl07 let us know if you don't get any hummers in a few weeks of setting out your bottles. We'll start running down the checklist and get you some visits! (BTW - CHANGE the water and CLEAN the bottle every 2-3 days regardless of visits)

 

[dirkclod]

I use the 4:1 ratio and change out every other day (2 day limit)...each bottle holds 1/2c, so 1/2c water and 2T sugar is my mix.

No worries on the pic...its a tossser. I just did a quick preset on the exposure and focus trap, so when I saw her I jumped up and snapped it, handheld and through the glass of my back window. To get the wings somewhat stopped I set at 2000 and had to bump ISO to 1000 to get it proper. So, there's a TON of noise in it and the focus was on the feeder rather than the bird. Crapload of CA in it as well. To get an actual acceptable image I'll setup a tripod, get the ISO down to get rid of that noise, focus on the bird and remote trigger the shutter and fill flash.

At least I'll "start" with that....

@BigAl07 let us know if you don't get any hummers in a few weeks of setting out your bottles. We'll start running down the checklist and get you some visits! (BTW - CHANGE the water and CLEAN the bottle every 2-3 days regardless of visits)

I know but your a photographer. I’m not. Your picture as far as I am concerned is excellent Our hummers are late arrivingthis year but are dangerous changing out feeders Ohhh your windows are clean

 

[Dave Pitman]

We have a similar situation to DC's. If you're still, they couldn't care less how close you get. I'm standing right next to the feeder with a point and shoot capturing the video below. I've put my hands around the feeder and they just land on my hands, only paying attention to each other.

They are fascinating, and nuts.

Hummer_Lunch.mp4

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

 

[Snowghost]

Wow. I have two feeders and they barely get used. Every time one bird starts to drink another comes by and chases it off. Not sure if anything can be done about that.

 

[dirkclod]

Wow. I have two feeders and they barely get used. Every time one bird starts to drink another comes by and chases it off. Not sure if anything can be done about that.

That’s normal or is with ours.
Course there’s the crockpot method but crap it takes 100 to make
a meal

 

[Fred Garvin]

Wow. I have two feeders and they barely get used. Every time one bird starts to drink another comes by and chases it off. Not sure if anything can be done about that.

Normal. They are very territorial. "One" of those birds is the dominant current owner. You have to have pretty overwhelming numbers before they'll readily share. If you notice, in the videos people post (pictures too) there's either just one, or a whole bunch. I always seem to get just the single who will lay claim and chase off any interlopers. It can get brutal, with chittering and squeaking, aerial acrobatics and even feathers flying.

I have 2 feeders, so one is out at a time. Every other day I fill the unused one and swap it out to empty and clean the used one...a rotation schedule. If you want, you could put out that other feeder but you need to place it out of sight of the current hummer, like on the other side of the house.

A friend of mine has a country place west of Mineral Wells, and they have half a dozen feeders on their patio. At times there are dozens and dozens of the little guys feeding and maneuvering around them. As posted above, you can quietly stand among them and they'll land on you, fly real close, hover right next to you, and if you're lucky, will land on a finger if you hold it there steady enough.

 

[dirkclod]

Still tasty wrapped in bacon like you do doves just takes more

 

[Fred Garvin]

Wrapped in bacon, with a cheese sauce dip on the side....I gotta get more hummers around here....

 

[dirkclod]

Wrapped in bacon, with a cheese sauce dip on the side....I gotta get more hummers around here....

Hey we have hundreds and you know I was kidding. Love to see them when they get here. Only for a few months but if I could photograph like you I’d study them.

 

[Fred Garvin]

You're farther east than me...do you get anything other than Black-Chinned and Ruby Throats? That's all we get here unless I go down to Brownsville or out to El Paso and get lucky.

 

[dirkclod]

You're farther east than me...do you get anything other than Black-Chinned and Ruby Throats? That's all we get here unless I go down to Brownsville or out to El Paso and get lucky.

To be honest I’ m not sure what all we do have. They start coming in now and you can see from that video it’s so many and so fast
its hard to tell. We can see the red on some which I thought were males and the others females. Have a freind that made a pole and has about 8 feeders and you can’t get near it as they will pound your head.

 

[Fred Garvin]

Ruby Throats. If you live east of the Rockies, pretty much all you'll see are Black-Chinned and Ruby Throats:



See the distribution on the latest Migration Map...here in DFW we get a mix of both with a rare outlier possible, but go east and all you see are Ruby Throats. Very easy to tell the difference between male/female as the male is very pretty:

Female


Male

 

[dirkclod]

Males always look better than females . All birds are that way.
I Turkey hunt and really is noticeable
Same with us

 

[Fred Garvin]

Eclectus Parrot: (Male/Left...Female/Right)

 

[lou101]

Congrats. to getting your first sightings. I'm here in Atlanta and I have not seen not one hummer yet. I even put out a Wyze motion activated security camera to make sure I don't miss any action. Hopefully one will show up soon.

 

[RussOnTheRoad]

We have a window mount hummingbird feeder. We don't get a lot of the birds here, but we can see them very close up. One downside is that they can accidentally hit the window. We've only seen this once, however, in hours and hours of observing them and there was no harm done that we can tell.

They are very sensitive to movement so when one comes around we sometimes freeze our movements so as not to scare it off.

Winters here are pretty chilly with temps sometimes (but rarely) dipping into the 20s or below. Still, some of the Anna's hummingbirds are year round residents. Having trained them to rely on me for food in warmer months I have felt obligated to feed them in the winter when natural food supply is limited or non-existent. Having read they need food first thing in the morning I have made it my business to get up at first light to put out food that otherwise might have become very chilled or frozen overnight. More than once a hungry hummer has been there to greet me in the early light of the morning well before sunrise. I feel I have sort of trapped myself into this responsibility. (It's like getting a puppy and then realizing you have to walk the dog regardless of the weather or time of day.) I take the feeder in a half hour after sunset and put it out 1/2 hour before sunrise on those cold days and may change it out several times a day with warmer food when the weather is cold.

On the subject of food, I have come across some info that suggests it isn't necessary to color it and that some coloring may even be harmful to the birds. I've also read that preservatives in commercially available food might not be good for them. I use the often recommended 1 part white sugar to 4 parts water, brought to a boil then allowed to cool. I refrigerate the unused food. I replace the food and clean the feeders often (more often in warmer weather) to protect the birds from pathogens.

Photographing the little jewels is quite a challenge. Even the fastest shutter speeds can still result in some blur of the wing tips. The speed at which their wings move is truly astonishing. That said, it varies. At one point, where the direction of travel reverses, their wings are close to motionless...but not for long. LOL. If you get lucky enough to catch them at the top or bottom of their wingbeat you've a better chance of a completely frozen wing without any blur.

I have found that my photos typically have a lot of noise due to shooting at high ISOs that allow for short shutter speeds. C'est la vie.

Hummingbird colors, BTW, are not from pigments in their feeathers but rather a result of prism like structures in their feathers that refract light. This explains why at some angles to the sun their colors scream while at others they are rare of non-existent. If you zoom in and look at the tips of the feathers in the close-up I'm attaching you can see some of the pancake shaped prisms inside the feather stucture.

 

[dirkclod]

The food coloring has never as far as I’ve seen has never bother
them and after experimenting blue seems to be thier Favourite.
Red is next. Just clear sugar water don’t seem to be as good.
Now we boil everthing before we fill any feeders.