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| A much more obliging photographer's model |
I pressed more tightly against the side of the house hoping to appear invisible to incoming hummingbirds. Wearing a green sweatshirt and shorts as my camouflage— perhaps I would look like a tree, albeit a tree with glasses holding a camera—I was nestled into a small patch of shade. I held my camera steady, not quite at eye level and heard the unmistakable sound of tiny motor droning overhead. I caught the shadow of the hummingbird on the deck in front of me and just as I lifted my camera, the shadow darted away. This was going to be more difficult than I anticipated.
We had become enamored with hummingbirds since observing them enjoying sugar water from a friend’s hummingbird feeder. So enamored in fact, that the next day I ordered one myself and as soon as it arrived suctioned it to the window, filled it homemade nectar and sat down to await the arrival of flocks of hummingbirds.
I waited. Nothing. My husband and I waited together. Nothing.
“Maybe they will feed in the morning,” my husband offered hopefully.
That night he read late into the night, googling all he could find on the Internet about hummingbirds. The red of the feeder would attract them. They migrated from New England to points south anywhere from July to September. They needed to put on weight before starting their long flight and our feeder wouldn’t delay beginning their journey.
When I awoke, the first words I heard were, “maybe they have already migrated.”
All that day we watched out the window, hoping one straggler would still venture by our feeder. Just when our vigilance was beginning to wane we heard a loud buzzing overhead and watched in awe as a hummingbird first hovered above, then set down upon our feeder and dipped in his beak for a long drink of homemade nectar.
I was hooked and instantly sought to catch the hummingbird in a photograph. The first few shots through the window were easy to take, but sadly, the dirt encrusted on my windowpane was far more visible than the tiny bird hovering through the glass. I tried different times of day with the sun at different angles, but none captured the whimsy of the hummingbird.
Thus I began sitting outside, near the feeder, as even with a zoom lens the tiny stature of the bird required me to be quite close if I had any chance of it filling my camera frame. Not surprisingly the hummingbirds were keenly aware of my presence every time I so much as twitched.
I watched as the sunlight slowly started sliding towards my shady territory. Soon my foot was bathed in sun and the light and warmth continued to spread up my leg and my torso, until I wished I had chosen something other than a heavy sweatshirt as camouflage. I felt large beads of sweat form on my back, yet still I waited quietly for the return of my petite funny friend. Whenever I heard the loud drone above, I froze in place, hardly breathing. The hummingbird would alight on the feeder and just as I raised my camera, would zoom away as quickly as it had arrived.
I tried holding my camera in place, but between its heft and the heat of the sun I soon grew impatient and set it down in my lap. As if the hummingbird knew I was no longer at the ready, he darted in for a quick sip and darted away in the time it took me to lift my camera to eye level. After what felt like an hour sweating in the sun, but was likely no more than 15 minutes, I decided to create a photo memory. The next time the hummingbird came by, I didn’t move a muscle, just studied his feathers and beak and his red collar and created my own mental image of my tiny, feathered friend.
