Mike Powell

How do you get a sharp photo of a hummingbird’s wings? Apparently, if a hummingbird is hungry enough, it will extract the nectar from a flower before it has bloomed, and the leverage required may force it to perch on the flower, doing away with the necessity to fly its wings rapidly.

Walking on the boardwalk at my local marshland park, the last thing on my mind was a hummingbird—I was searching for butterflies and dragonflies.  As I turned a corner, I saw a flash of color and figured it was a butterfly. I took a closer look and realized it was a hummingbird, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris).

The hummingbird was circling around a plant with red, trumped-shaped flowers that was partially hanging over the boardwalk. Most of the flowers had not yet bloomed, so the bird seems to have decided to use its bill to drill into the side of the unopened flowers to extract the nectar. That decision was largely responsible for me being able to get some shots, because it caused the hummingbird to hang around longer.

I realized that I had a limited window of opportunity and made a quick adjustment to my camera to increase the shutter speed of my camera, although that meant I had to narrow my depth of field. I also ended up shooting downward, with the gray composite boards of the boardwalk as the background. It was definitely a challenge to keep the camera focused on the hummingbird.

The photos are not perfect, but I am pretty happy that I was able to get photos at all, given that this is only the second time that I have seen a hummingbird in the wild. Next time, perhaps I’ll manage to get a more traditional shot of a hummingbird hovering in the air.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved