Give A Guy A Break!

I’ve been smitten by the Snowcap for a long, long time! This color-packed bird is only 2.5″ (1/4″ bigger than the smallest in the world) in length, from tip to tip, making it the second smallest hummer in the world. My first time to see them, experience them, and photograph them was in 2024. And I wasn’t thrilled with the results I came back with, so I returned this year to improve on them. Being so small, they can be pushed around by other, larger species somewhat easily. This combination makes getting “the” shot I had in mind … challenging!

There was a hedge, a different locale from the one I worked in 2024 at Rancho Naturalista, where the Snowcap were being seen pretty regularly. For five afternoons, I haunted that hedge, a slave to my desire and the flight of the Snowcap, looking for that better image. The ISO on the Z 6III was hiked up to 1200, providing a shutter speed of 1/400 @f/8. They played with me, appearing at one spot which I would dutifully move over to only to have them move to another spot once I was set up at the first. Then I would get one in the viewfinder only to see a heartbeat later, and before I could depress the shutter release, it would be chased off. I was starting to think I would go back home empty-handed. Finally, the last afternoon, one male hovered for what seemed like a lifetime (in reality only for seconds), giving me a better shot than the previous year. The last shot I got was the one that I really liked. With one wing going right and the other going left, it perfectly describes photographing hummers. They just can’t give a guy a break!