While I spent a lot of time with my spouse and friends, I also spent a significant amount of time with the hummingbirds. In fact, I went a little crazy photographing them.
I experimented with using a tripod and also just holding the camera. I took pictures from inside and outside. This one was without any zoom, so it shows the distance when I was shooting from the inside. The feeder is barely visible. I wasn't much closer when I was outside, since I didn't want to spook them.
I probably took 175 pictures of just the hummingbirds. Hurrah for digital cameras! Many of the pictures were blurry or were of an empty feeder. While I love my camera, it is not the best for taking sharp photos of fast-moving objects.
Cropping is the only change I did to any of the pictures in this post. This one is my absolute favorite. I'll call him Hamlet (to drink or not to drink - - that is the question).
Here are some other seated hummingbird pictures.
When I was outside, it became a game to try and see where the hummingbird(s) would perch before they approached the feeder. I tried to get a good picture of one of the perches, but it was too hard.
Still, I like the difference in the expression in these two pictures. There was a branch/stick that they perched on (until I figured this out and they started perching elsewhere). The background is a tent, since the cabin could not quite fit 14 people. I didn't crop these, so they are at full zoom.
After they stopped perching on the stick, I noticed that they would perch on the power line. While this is not a great photo, it shows just how small they are. The power line looks like some humongous cable, when it's just a power line.
I also saw some skirmishes where one hummingbird would chase off others.
Last, but certainly not least in the hummingbird department, I got some good in-flight pictures. Finally, since I was not successful the previous two years. It turns out all I needed to do was spend oodles and oodles of time obsessively devoted to picture-taking. This was the first decent one.
After that, my luck seemed to increase and I got some others.
I did get some other wildlife pictures. There was a nesting pair of osprey. This year's offspring either fell out of the nest or had recently fledged. On the second to last day we were there, the offspring were on the ground. There were three of them. The next day, we only saw two of them and they still weren't flying. Plus, it had rained. There were also several dead fish, which the parents must have brought. The parents were either hanging out on the nearby telephone poles or they were flying around. When they were in flight, they were joined by other osprey, since we saw up to 5 adult-sized birds flying.
Here is one of the youth on the ground. I like the different greens and textures in the foreground and background.
Here is the best soaring picture - - another very hard picture to take with my camera (since I'm also not great at tracking over distance).
On the last day right before we left, my spouse and I went down to the dock to say "goodbye" to the lake. We were rewarded. It was windy so the lake had waves. Still, we saw mom and 6 babies straight out from the dock. They aren't loons, but I am not sure what they are. Our friend thought maybe red-necked grebes. I looked up a picture and I'm not sure.
Now that I'm home, I was thinking about hanging up a hummingbird feeder, here. I might. I might not. I'm a little afraid that if I do, I won't get anything done around the house or gardens ever, other than trying to take more hummingbird pictures.
By the way if any of my friends are interested in painting from any of these, please do! I am going to, after I do a few practice paintings of cats or something more familiar.
