Hummers and Summers

This place has gone to the birds, I swear.

We have had lots of bird visitors to the feeders lately. The goldfinches are thick as bees in a hive, and now the hummingbirds are starting to show up in larger numbers. It's colorful as can be, with the cardinals, blue jays, the finches, woodpeckers, and all the others who come daily.

But we were surprised and pleased to see this fellow:

He's a Summer Tanager and based on his orange-ish color, I think he's a youngster still getting his rosy-red feathers.

Taking photos of hummingbirds is really not easy! Their movements are so fast my camera can't keep up. I need to check my settings and play with it a bit to see if I can do any better. These guys are more fearless than last year's visitors who flew off if we moved even a tiny bit. These have almost bumped into us as they dart about and quarrel with each other.

This one, I think, is also a young bird, since his ruby throat is not quite red yet. There are others here with brilliant red throats but I did not see them the day I took the photos.

Taken from a slightly different place, and see how the color changes?

This is how most of my photos came out--blurs of wings and bodies.

Somehow I caught this one mid-flight, but the wings are going so fast they're all but invisible. (The pear tree in the background has a serious case of fire blight this year, and looks so sad.)

I love the way the green shows up on the bird on the left.

I'll keep trying to get better photos of these wily little fellas. And maybe catch some of the goldfinches too.


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