I realize that that I have posted about hummingbirds a lot this summer, but, well there have been more hummers zipping around our garden than we have ever seen before. Like three times as many. (Hummingbirds Nesting Backyard Hummingbirds More Hummingbirds)

And suddenly, I’ve figured out how to shoot them with my new camera. Mostly, get the camera to focus on the hummer, then hold the shutter release down and shoot 45 photos in 15 seconds. It’s brute-force photography — no setting up the shot, no waiting for the animal to look at the camera, just tons of photographs. Then toss the out-of-focus ones, and hopefully you’re left with a few really good ones.

This is a broad-tailed hummingbird. I think it is a juvenile, because it stayed deep in the shrubbery and didn’t seen to have a good idea of what it was supposed to be doing. Or it might be a very shy female. They look pretty much the same.

Above, it’s targeted a flower that is open. I love the pollen flying out as it sticks it’s beak in.

I never realized that hummers could or would hunch their backs like this — they might have been just moving too fast for me to catch it, or it might have been a juvenile thing. It reminds me of a dolphin bunching up to really push for a leap up out of the water, which might be exactly what it’s doing with the air.

But what I found most interesting was that for the fifteen seconds or so that it took me to shoot this sequence, it was very specifically targeting flowers that hadn’t opened yet.

At first I thought “Silly youngster! Doesn’t it know it can’t get in there yet?”

Again, trying to pierce the immature flower. It’s beak looks a little like a hypodermic needle, doesn’t it?

Again, very specifically going at that closed flower right in front of it.

But wait! The joke’s on me!

The hypodermic beak found a way in! The hummer’s reward for it’s persistence? Lots of fresh nectar that nobody else has depleted yet. Smart hummer.