The Problem with Photographing Hummingbirds

After several years of reading comments from my fellow 10,000 Birds writers, I have come to understand that my colleagues from the Old World often suffer from Hummingbird Envy. And while I don’t like to gloat, I can understand why they would like to have the sort of access I have to these gorgeous little birds. (I feel blessed to live in Mexico, where I have seen 19 species of hummingbirds so far.)

Still, I suspect that some bird aficionados who have had no access to actual hummers in the field, but have seen many photos of them under ideal conditions, may be unaware of how hard it is to see and photograph hummingbirds’ “true colors”.

Hummingbirds do indeed display the widest range of colors of all bird families. Some of these colors are the product of feather pigmentation, and are always visible. But their brightest colors are the result of irridescence produced by the structure of certain feathers, and cannot be seen unless the light conditions and angle are just right — which they usually are not.

To further complicate matters, when irridescence does occur, the reflection off the feathers usually becomes almost blindingly bright. Our eyes are able to adjust to this, to some extent. But cameras usually cannot do so quickly enough. Which means that my images may be sharp, or occasionally colorful, but they are almost never both. Here are two images in which irridescence did occur, but in spite of my best post-processing efforts, I could not create a sharp image:

Berylline Hummingbird

White-eared Hummingbird

In the field, many hummingbirds look mostly dark, almost black. And when they do show their colors, photos will look out of focus. Here is a typical photo of the large Rivoli’s Hummingbird of my region. The second photo is the best that I have of this species’ beautiful, but rarely seen, colors; but of course it lacks definition. I have registered this hummer more than 50 times, and yet, this is the best image I have of its colors:

This week several of my birding buddies asked me to take them to Cerro de Garnica, a site at 3,000 m (10,000 feet), where the Steller’s Jay is a sure thing. On our way, I checked with them to see what other new species I could show them. Along with the Jays, and a Gray-breasted Wood-Wren that eventually sang to us but did not show its face, I discovered that they had not seen the Blue-throated Mountain-Gem, a hummer that is especially abundant in a certain reforested field at the end of the trail. Lots of large blooming thistles along the way suggested that this thistle-rich patch would be especially full of Mountain-Gems. And it was.

We saw, in the end, at least a half dozen of these large hummingbirds. In spite of their tantalizing name, they looked mostly gray. Only the two white (ear- and mustache-) facial lines and the bold white tail tip distinguish this hummer from all the others of our region.

And if you’ve dreamed of taking hummingbird pictures with electric colors, here is a taste of reality: I took some 250 photos of the Blue-throated Mountain-Gems in that field. Here is a series of four consecutive shots, taken in continuous shoot mode. Yes, that final shot is the only one, out of 250, that shows the male’s namesake blue throat. It took me three cycles of image-sharpening and noise reduction to achieve this one rather fuzzy shot.

But all is not lost. Some species are more photo-friendly than others. I have many sharp and shiny shots of our most common resident hummer, the Broad-billed Hummingbird.

And while our most common migratory hummer, the rather amazing Rufous Hummingbird, has only once given me a photo with its gorget in full flame, I do have many shots that come close.

If you ever have the chance to practice hummingbird photography, and I certainly hope you do, my recommendation would be to set your shutter speed as high as light conditions will allow, and enjoy all the dramatic poses they produce with their unique manner of flight. If you can add their colors to those poses, you are lucky indeed.