This is my day 13 contribution to Becky’s January Squares: Light photo challenge and day one of my five day sequence of Flight photos.
An immature Ruby-throated Hummingbird in flight on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario in the summer.
Tag: Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Cosmic Photo Challenge: Spooky
The Ghost of a Hummingbird for the Cosmic Photo Challenge: Spooky.
Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Big and Small
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Big and Small.
I decided to go with two photos, one of a big subject and one of a small subject.
I thought about some of the bird species that have headed south for the winter and that we won’t be seeing again until next spring. Two of those species are Sandhill Cranes and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. You can’t get a much bigger difference in size.
Two Sandhill Cranes feeding in a local hay field. Taken on my way home after going down to Colpoy’s Bay for the sunrise.
An hour or so later on the same day I was set up in the yard photographing the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that arrive for the summer. As this bird lacks the patch of iridescent ruby red feathers on the throat it’s either a female or an immature bird.
Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Satisfaction
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts Photo Challenge: Satisfaction.
My first thought was of the Rolling Stones song before seeing the Mick Jagger graphic on the challenge page. Somehow I ended up thinking about some of the photos from last year that I submitted for consideration in 2019 calendars.
I submitted the three photos below to a calendar publishing company I hadn’t dealt with before. They were looking for images for a wildlife calendar.
In the end they had so many submissions that they decided to publish a birds calendar as well as the wildlife calendar. All three of my shots made it into the calendars.
To make the 100% success rate all the more satisfying, the shots were taken with a decade old DSLR and a manual focus telephoto lens I purchased used in the mid 1990s.
A young male Rose-breasted Grosbeak in the rain.
An American Red Squirrel in dappled sunlight.
A juvenile Ruby-throated Hummingbird approaches the feeder.
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Delicate
My contribution to the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge Delicate.
I had a few ideas for the challenge before deciding to go with a variety of images that I would describe as delicate in some way. Two of the shots are from the 52 week photo project that I did last year while another dates back to 1987.
A young Ruby-throated Hummingbird in flight.
The ghost of a Maple leaf on snow.
An adult Eurasian Blue Tit feeding recently hatched young.
Detail of some Foxtail Barley seed heads.
Dandelion seed head.
Remains of a seed head in winter.
The wonder of migration
The new Tuesday Photo Challenge is Wonder.
Each spring I wait for the return of the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Having spent the winter in the tropics they head north for the summer. The only Hummingbird species that breeds to the east of the Mississippi River some Ruby-throated Hummingbirds travel north of the Great Lakes to breed. A tremendous journey for such a small bird.
This male was photographed on the South Bruce Peninsula, Ontario last summer and obviously doesn’t like its photo being taken as it’s sticking its tongue out at the photographer.
The Spirit of a Hummingbird.
The new Cosmic Photo Challenge is IN THE REALM OF THE OTHERWORLDLY.
I spent some time thinking about the challenge before Googling otherworldly which was defined as “relating to an imaginary or spiritual world” and the word spiritual made me think of this photo of a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird from last summer.
After editing the photo last year I thought of it as the spirit of a Hummingbird. I added a film type border as it makes me think of some early photographs that supposedly show fairies or ghosts.
