A Costa's hummingbird (Calypte costa) sips nectar with its needle like bill from the red, tube-shaped, Salvia microphylla.    Coevolution is a term that describes the reciprocal evolutionary influences that interdependent species have; the long slender bill of the hummingbird and the tubular Salvia sp. flowers are a good example.

Click on the framed image (right) for animation.

Hummingbird in the backyard the day after Thanksgiving. This photo was made using a tripod mounted OM2S camera with a Vivitar 75-300 mm zoom lens and multiple Olympus Flash units all off camera and close to the feeder.

I had three types of hummingbirds showing up at the backyard feeder in San Gabriel, California. I wasn't sure about this Black Chinned Hummingbird until I took the photo above. The color streak at the base of the gorget makes the identification easy when it is seen as in this photo.

Below a Costa's hummingbird (Calypte costa) regards a soda can that serves as a feeder.



Punch a small hole in the side of a cola can, rinse it out and fill it with a 1:4 part sugar / water solution and you'll have a hummingbird feeder.

The sun bird on the right is not a hummingbird although it occupies a similar ecological niche in the Old World.

Sun birds are a completely different family of birds and do not hover in the same way as hummingbirds.

Sun birds like many other birds have some coloring by structurally iridescent feathers and take nectar from flowers or as in this case, from a feeder in a zoo aviary.

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Iridescent Hummingbird Feather

The iridescent tipped feathers of the hummingbird's gorget are unique to their avian family the Trochilidae.

Hummingbirds can precisely control the direction of the iridescent light by moving the feather tips relative to the angle of the sun.

Thin Film Interference is the name of the process by which the iridescent colors are generated. Light waves refracted by air bubbles in a thin melanin pigment coating of the feather barbules negate or reinforce one another to result in the bright coloration.







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Male & female Ruby Throat hummingbirds on the Droll Yankee Feeder. Feeder mounted on the plastic pipe atop the SLIK tripod. Kodak Max 800 film. This shot was taken hand held with an Olympus IS-3 DLX through a double glass pane of the backdoor window, without flash. -- Hank, 6/6/01

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Infrared view of Costa's Hummingbird by flash illumination. This photo was made with conventional (refractive) lenses, the photographic details are in the Infrared section of these pages.

Some new types of Infrared film have been developed so one day I hope to make some comparison photos with a hummingbird using the new films.




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Costa's hummingbird sips from the feeder tube in the front window.

This image was captured with an Olympus OM2S & Zuiko 28mm lens on a
Vivitar zoom extension doubler. The film was Kodak Gold 100 film.

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Red Tailed Comet

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The Red Tailed Comet on the right is a South American hummingbird taken inside the hummingbird aviary at the San Diego Zoo in California. It is one of my favorite places for photography. Over the years I've seen some amazing hummingbirds there.

I took the picture below with my latest camera, an Olympus IS-3 DLX, late last Summer. The sun was about to set. Two exotic hummingbirds became quite active as dusk set in - racing the length of the aviary and hovering before one another. This photo was taken with Kodak Max 200 print film. The Olympus IS3 DLX is an amazing camera.

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Below a Costa's hummingbird that came to the front window feeder for several years. It might have been a year round resident of San Gabriel, California, but I'm not sure of it.


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