HUMMINGBIRD PARADISE

Stanford, California, March 2025

Hummingbirds are a delight to watch and one of my favorite subjects to photograph. There is a bounty of Anna’s Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) where I live providing plenty of opportunities to photograph them. In particular there are several locations on Stanford University campus, such as the Arizona garden, where there is a constant buzz of activity, esp. around cactus blooms. All the photos from this series are from a single fruitful session one morning in March. The hummingbirds hold their bodies extremely stable while hovering with their wings that go off like little motors. The shutter speed on the last image is as low as 1/160. But as you can see, the image is still pretty sharp showing how steady the hummingbirds are while hovering. Only the wings are blurred which is expected as hummingbirds flap their wings anywhere from 70 to 200 times a second.