Photo Shoot: Hummingbird season winding down

Steve Heaslip, Cape Cod Times
·2 min read

The first thing I read every month is the right hand page of the Old Farmer’s Almanac monthly listing. This one-page discourse gives a lot of info in a short read. A Google search long before such a thing existed.

Each day has the moon phase, high and low tides and a bit of historical data and a short essay about the month called the “Farmer’s Calendar.” The listing for Friday Aug. 26 tipped me off to the observance of National Dog Day and also a bulleted item, “hummingbirds migrate south.”

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Setting the stage

I have expanded my hummingbird feeders to a pair during the pandemic, one in the front of the house, another in back. This has kept us indentured to the Domino Sugar company for most of the summer, but it is short money for a season’s worth of bird watching in these COVID stay-at-home times. The Almanac note set me in action.

A hummingbird settles into the late afternoon light of August for a long drink at a feeder in Barnstable ahead of migration south.
A hummingbird settles into the late afternoon light of August for a long drink at a feeder in Barnstable ahead of migration south.

The past few weeks have been a feeding frenzy at the two feeders. In addition, aerial bird fights to rival any air show. Upon further reading, the hummingbirds are extremely territorial, chasing away any interlopers to “their” food source. My non-scientific observations can attest to this.

Catching hummingbirds in motion

Watching all these aerial acrobatics, it was time to pull out the jumbo lens and make some last hummingbird photos of the season. Having two feeders presented two lighting opportunities. But the south-facing feeder won out for late afternoon light. This of course meant that the feeder in the backyard got all the action.

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But patience triumphed in the end as gradually the dueling long beak warriors arrived. A trio soon set up their air show and I settled in behind the lens. I would like to say I have a tack sharp image of three hummingbirds’ dive bombing each other, but you can see the results for yourself.

Once calm prevailed, one of the birds took a more relaxed approach to feeding, instead of hovering, it settled in for a long drink in the late August sun. I won’t be migrating south anytime soon, but the idea of relaxing in the waning days of summer seems like a very good idea.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Photo Shoot: Last days to catch hummingbirds