A hummingbird feeding
I’m a sucker for hummingbirds. Not something we have in the UK, they are such wonderfully pretty creatures and a sure sign that you are somewhere exotic.
The numbers involved are incredible. It does depend on the species but hummingbirds flap their wings anywhere from 700-5400 times a minute. That’s anywhere from 12 – 90 times a second. It’s mindboggling. Their wings actually beat in a figure of 8 shape – something you can actually just about make out in this photo.
The noise their wingbeats generate is quite something too.
This particular chap lives in the gardens of the Finca Rosa Blanca hotel near San Jose. The hotel is a wonderfully comfortable, quirky place with extensive gardens and a coffee plantation thrown in for good measure.
I got up in the morning and saw a hummingbird dart from plant to plant and decided that I wanted to get a picture. It wasn’t long before I realised that you can’t take a photo of a hummingbird by following it, they are just too fast.
What you have to do is pick a flower, focus the camera on it and sit still, hoping that the bird eventually chooses to come and taste that particular plant.
It was 10am when I sat down on the grass, camera poised and ready to shoot. Every 10 minutes or so the hummingbird would dart down, do the rounds of the flowers and head back into the undergrowth. It never came near my chosen flower.
By 10.45 I was getting a little numb. By 11 I was thinking that I would have to give up on my attempt. By 11.15 I was getting delirious. Then, at 11.25, down it swooped to my flower and I got the shot.
It took 1.5 hours to take this photo, it was worth every minute.
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