Yesterday as I was watching some Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) buzzing around some distant trumpet flowers at Huntley Meadows Park, one of them suddenly flew closer to a small patch of cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis). The shutter speed was too slow to stop the action completely, but you can see how perfectly the hummingbird’s bill fits into the long tubular flower that is too narrow for most bees to reach.
Hummingbirds fly really fast, so I wasn’t too surprised that there was a lot of motion blur in my shots. I was a bit shocked, however, to see that my shutter speed had fallen to 1/100 of a second for these shots, which is, of course, way too slow for the subject, particularly because I was shooting with my zoom lens at 600mm handheld. When I was focusing on the sitting hummingbird that I included as the final shot here, there was considerably more light and the subject was stationary and I did not make any adjustments when the hummingbird flew to a darker area with the cardinal flowers.
If you look closely at the shot of the perched hummingbird, you may notice that it has tiny feet. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, “The extremely short legs of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird prevent it from walking or hopping. The best it can do is shuffle along a perch. Nevertheless, it scratches its head and neck by raising its foot up and over its wing.”



© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
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