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Hummers in the Leopard Lilies
(Click images to view larger.) |
It would have been a beautiful day to bike up to Mt. Tam to place my trail cameras in a new location, but I figured the leopard lilies would be in full bloom and hopefully swarming with hummingbirds. Experience with the FZ-80 has shown that it's not really up to the challenge, so I drove up to Rock Spring with my DSLR. It took a minute for the hummers to get used to my presence (along with the jarring mirror-slaps every time I tripped the shutter), but after a while they paid me no mind.
I couldn't get an angle on the lilies with the sun at my back, so I had to shoot mostly into the sun. That worked fine for photographing the leopard lilies which looked good back-lit, but proved quite tricky for the hummers. Biting horse flies, prickly grass seeds, and sneaky stinging nettles also added to the challenge.
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| Bright Lilies, Shadowy Forest |
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| Queen of the Lily Patch |
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| Lilies With Slightly Tattered Pale Swallowtail |
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| Dancing With Lilies |
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| Hummer Perching on Lily's Style |
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| In addition to the lilies, the hummers also appeared to nip a few insects from some meadow rue that had gone to seed, and sipped from the purple flowers of large leatherroot (Hoita macrostachya). Apparently it is a host plant for sphynx moth, which might explain why the "hummer" that ran into my leg turned out to be a sphynx moth, the first I've ever seen on Mt. Tam. Unfortunately I was unable to photograph it. |
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| Letting Gravity Do Some of the Work |
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