Incidents and accidents

I love my camera! My hummingbirds are getting all chunky for southward migration. They’ll all be gone within a month from now or sooner. Normally, they weigh 2.5-3 grams (the same as a sheet of paper!), but right now they can weigh as much as 4.5 grams! They’re getting so fat they have trouble lifting off the feeders now.
See the full size image.

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All of the photos from the trip are now up. No captions yet, but I’m working on it. Here are a few of the best.

Three days into the trip, and we finally have internet. The hotel was in the middle of switching internet service, so we were SOL for a bit. The trip has gone great so far though! We’ve been here for about three days now, and have seen 9 species of hummingbirds.

M/F Magnificent
M/F Blue Throated
M/F Broad-Tailed
M/F Broad-Billed
M/F White-Eared
M Lucifer
M/F Black-Chinned
M/F Anna’s
F Calliope

We’ve missed Rufous, Allen’s, Berylline, Violet-Cowned, Costa’s and the Male Calliope. The Costa’s we’ll see in Tucson at the museum, but I don’t know about any others. So far I’ve gotten some pretty decent photos, but I have no photoshop onthis computer. Editing in Paint sucks a lot. So far, I’ve taken about 700 pictures. Of all the places we’ve been, some of the best photos have been in the field behind the hotel. The shot to the left was taken last night near sunset. It’s a male Anna’s, and he was less than a foot from me, singing. Hopeful to get a girl or something.

The number of Hummingbirds here is amazing. We saw 7 species in one hour, hundreds of birds. They’re everywhere in the canyons. The best part so far was when John and I were in the mountains at Beatty’s. We walked up the hill and there were at least 8 feeders there. One feeder was right next to the entrance to the veiwing area, and I stood there taking pictures of a Broad-Tailed. As I stood there, another flew up. John says “They’re so close, it’s as if you could reach out and touch one.” I slowly reached out my arm, expecting it to fly away. When it didn’t, I moved a bit closer. It didn’t move. I acually gently pet it’s back before it finally realized I was human and flew off. I know I shouldn’t abuse the birds like that, but it was too magical to pass up.
Worst part? Realizing I left my little camera on a table at the preserve we were watching hummigbirds at. I paniced for a bit before emembering where it was. I called the preserve and they said someone had turned it in. Bless that selfless person, because I got it back.
Arizona Photo Album so far - here. More will bedded, of course, once I don’t have to edit in Paint.

Last night, I saw a male hummingbird at one feeder. This is good, because I haven’t seen any around here since April 10th. Today I’ve seen a little girl hummingbirs about once every hour. She’s probably sitting on eggs, or she’d be coming every 10 minutes. She’s very early for nest building, so she’ll likely build two nests (total of 4 young) this year. The rest of the females will show up within two weeks and begin their nests.
Just two more day until I’m surrounded by hummingbirds everywhere!
Off topic: anyone have a really tall chair I can have? Like, taller than a tall barstool tall.

Both hummingbirds returned this morning. I got up at *choke* 7am to see if they came back. I saw the first male at 7:15 and the second at 7:18. I haven’t seen the second male since about 8am, so I think he’s moved onward. The first one may have chased him off and he moved to easier territory. The one that remains is quite timid. He’s often gone before I can even get the darn camera up and focused. I managed to get the left shot of him and four more like it, but that’s it so far. The Stump is in raptures about the new giant bugs to watch. Check out the early morning shot I caught: here.

I HAVE HUMMINGBIRDS!!! Ah…. Yeah. I do. I saw the first one at 5:55pm this evening. A bright, shiny adult male. I yelled so loud that I scared the poor thing away. I grabbed my camera and laid in wait for him to return. Snapped a few photos to make sure I had some, then set up the tripod to see about getting some identifying shots. A few hours later (with these beautiful shots), and I said “wait a minute… I think it’s two different birds…” I looked out front and there’s a male hummingbird. I look out back and there’s… a male hummingbird! Both at the same time, two different feeders. So far I haven’t seen them fighting yet, but the peace won’t last long. Yay for me, this is 11 days earlier than last year! I just hope they stick around this time. Larken, fill up the feeder, they’re probably wondering what’s going on over at your old place.

I hate gardening. I really do. But I love hummingbirds, so I go out and I dig holes in the dirt for hours on end. I started at 9:30 this morning and I’m done at 11:30. Not bad for all that I did:

Morning Glory vines: planted on trellis 1
Cypress Vine: planted on trellis 2
2 Dragon Wing begonias: moved from front to back of apt.
1 Butterfly Bush: moved from front to back
1 Purple Majesty salvia: planted in front
1 Black and Blue salvia: planted in front
2 Hot Lips salvia planted in front

Everything is out and in the ground except for my Blue Bedder salvia seedlings, which are still only about 2.5 inches tall.

DavidB (my photo-geek neighbor) has been gone for a week finalizing a few things after his mother died. Larken said she died in a fire and they’re investigating it, but that’s all I know. I had been under the impression that she’d died of old age, DavidB being about as old as MY dad. Anyway, a few things survived the fire at the house, so he went to go get them. He and his wife (Larken’s mom) came back today. She comes and knocks on the door and is like “I got something for ya!” So I follow her around to her back porch and she’s got a rosebush in a pot and a camellia in a bucket, both about 3 feet tall. She says “I’m keeping the rose, but I thought you might like the camellia. Do you think the hummingbirds would like it?” Now, usually, I dislike camellias. They’re just not that pretty, in my opinon. Plus, they attract bees like crazy. But the bush she has is georgeous. The flowers are a baby pink streaked with a darker pink, and wonderfully scented. So I reply “The hummingbird won’t, but I will!” Larken and I carry it back to my flowerbed and I dig a nice hole and plant the thing. She said “Now, the only condition is that you have to dig it up and take it with you when you move. I miagine you’d be doing that with your rose tree anyway.” So, it’s a pretty pink flowerbush. For free! I helped her plant the rosebush in return. Wednesday, I’ll be planting the salvia I got a few days ago at the hummingbird plant sale and my vigorous morning glories. Stumpy keeps eating them, so they need to go out.

It’s the motherboard.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell I do to them. This is the third in five years! It’s not like I regularly attatch magnets to it or something. I don’t use it as a footstool or a kitty bed. So… yeah. I need a new one to the tune of about $200. Damn damn damn.

I’m waiting with bated breath again. It’s that time of year. Hummingbirds could conceiveably make it here within a day or two. I’ve got my feeders filled and waiting. Check the migration map!

I’ve been having trouble with my Sigma 70-300mm lens. I keep getting photos like this out of it.

Not very sharp at all. I was begining to think that I’d never be able to use the darn thing without a tripod, which would be very sad indeed. Then my photo-geeking neighbor, DavidB, told me somehting I’d read somewhere and then forgotten. He said “Use the middle F-stop.” For those of you unfamiliar with cameras and lenses, here’s a quick bit: lenses have blades or plates, which open and close to let light in. Each setting of these blades is called a ’stop’ or an ‘f-stop’. The 70-300mm lens stops from F/4 to F/29, making the middle stop of this lens F/11 or so. My 50mm Macro goes from F/2.8 to F/44, making it’s middle stop somewhere around F/22. It’s different for every lens. So, I decided to do a bit of an experiment. Is the 50mm lens sharper than the 300mm lens, even when the photo is enlarged? If I could get away without taking the big 300mm to Arizona, I’d be happy.

The 300mm is on the left, the 50mm enlarged is on the right. Pretty darn sharp, even when compared side-by-side. These shots are from a tripod mounted camera, which means that there’s no shaky hands making the camera’s pictures fuzzy. If I wanted to drag a tripod around the whole vacation, this would be great. Me, I’d rather hold the camera with my hands and turn myself rather than picking up some contraption to follow a hummingbird. Since I have notoriously shaky hands, I needed to know if I could get a usable photo out of the 300mm at all, or if I should just hope for the best with the 50mm.

This is a hand-held shot of a pair of doves I just took. The doves were about 20 feet away from me. Nice and harp! Yay! The middle stop works quite well for hand-held shots in bright sun. Not so well for shady areas though. But, I think I can safely take it with us and get a few good shots out of it, at least at the zoos and feeders. Wheee!