Costa's Hummingbird

[Sharif Uddin]

A costa's hummingbird from my backyard. I bought some flowering plants two years ago for the hummingbirds. Last year the plants produced lots of flowers but there were no hummingbirds. This year only one plant is flowering at the moment, but not a lot. So I had to resort to photographing the hummers at the feeder set up. I try to time it so I get some shots when the birds back out from the feeder, which gives me may be a one second window every time to get some shots. Lots of my shots end up with bad wing positions. But this one turned out quite good with little bit of the purple gorget showing. I removed the edge of the feeder from the bottom right corner of the frame. I chose to leave the insect on its bill because, well, they do eat a lot of bugs!

Cropped and processed in C1 Pro and PS CC. Noise reduction with Neat Image.

Nikon D850 + 500mm PF
1/3200s
f/8
ISO 1600

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Sharif a very nice capture !!!
Nice and clean frame , the insect is a nice addition .
Well exposed and good details showing up , well done .

Just wish for more DOF .

TFS Andreas

[Kurt Bowman]

nice frame Sharif! Nice techs and I am fine with the DOF personally.

[Daniel Cadieux]

You could place some water-sugar drops inside the flowers of choice to entice them onto those. Neat little hummer. Some tough highlights on the neck, but overall nice image.

[Sharif Uddin]

Thanks everyone for your comments and feedback.

@Andreas, there was a typo in the original post. It was actually taken at f/8.

@ Daniel, the flower plants I have are for hummingbirds. They produce bright red flowers on a long stem. The plants are just not producing any flowers this year. Just a bummer. May be next spring I will have better luck.