Whatbird.com

Another one

 

This one's beak melts in with the background!

 

Wish the wire wasn't there! Wanted to retake but the moment was gone ..

Excellent picture of the gradual size reductions of the inner primaries.  Now the million dollar question, female or first year male?  Nice shots.

---

Latest Birds: Sage Thrasher, Ferruginous Hawk, Common Goldeneye

 

Thanks Matt.

Female, she frequented that spot every day, close to the feeder.

That's where she sat and watched the male come zooming by and then they both would fly away.

The quest for the Hummers continues... one from today.

Fraser

OK one more from today...

F

Love the pose and composition on the second shot!  Looks like you've added a fourth strobe, too

You are looking at the four eye highlites... actually there are 6 strobes now.  Two of them are on the other side.  Now the problem is the correct placement.  I'm working on that.

Thanks for your comments.

Fraser

OK, if you are getting into composition, time for some Sally Rand pictures. 

Excellent shots.

---

Latest Birds: Sage Thrasher, Ferruginous Hawk, Common Goldeneye

Photgog:

You are looking at the four eye highlites... actually there are 6 strobes now.  Two of them are on the other side.  Now the problem is the correct placement.  I'm working on that.

Yes I am.  I wasn't fully convinced that the fourth one wasn't the sun, but they're all exactly the same brightness, so I guessed that you'd been busy

I should have guessed that there were more, though.  You've got a perfect rim light in that shot as well.

6 strobes.  You're really getting serious!  And it shows in the results, too.  Thanks for sharing.

OK this quest for better shots will never end... Here is a shot of my capture setup.  I was trying to show the setup with a Glorious Hummer Capture... but this shot showed a flaw in the strobe settings.

 The HOT strobe on the left was set to 1/8 power, the remaining were set to 1/128 power... the power setting required to give the 1/40000 sec flash.  The one strobe with more flash duration burned out the photo of the mummer and notice that the wings are not frozen.

Like a surfer looking for the PERFECT WAVE... I guess I will always try for a better hummer... 

Fraser

Just to be a pain in the a** most birders ID their bird when they post it.... yours is an excellent example of an after hatch year male Anna's. 

---

Latest Birds: Sage Thrasher, Ferruginous Hawk, Common Goldeneye

Well you are correct... this is a young Anna's... My point here and frustration was my error in the setup.  The bird ID here was secondary to the post, or at least was secondary to my frustration.

Here is an over blown blowup to show the wing blur.

I can do better.

Fraser

After blowing the shot I just wanted to add to your frustration.

Ok, that done, what is the thinking behind the proximity of the strobes?  Could you back off say 6 feet with the light palcements (I am talking theory here not $10,000 for scaffolding)?

---

Latest Birds: Sage Thrasher, Ferruginous Hawk, Common Goldeneye