“FEATURES”
Thank you so much technical Photography Group for featuring this on Sun, Mar 15/09!

Many thanks to Marie Bokslag, Cora Wandel, Nancy Stafford and Katagram for so kindly featuring this in the ImageWriting(2/24)Group on March 7/09!

A female Rufous Humming Bird takes a rest on some Crocosmia flowers. There is more to resting here, as she sits defending her territory from other Humming birds who might dare attempt to feed from the flowers while she is present! lol

“ABOUT THE RUFOUS HUMMING BIRD”

Size: 7-9 cm (3-4 in)
Wingspan: 11 cm (4 in)
Weight: 2-5 g (0.07-0.18 ounces)

Sex Differences

The male has a red throat, where the female throat is white with a few red feathers. Males are extensively orange on back and body, where as the female has a green back and head. The male’s tail is orange with pointed black tips and the female’s tail is orange, green and black with rounded white tips.

Rufous Humming Birds feed on flower nectar, small insects, and tree sap. Of course, they will certainly visit hummingbird feeders too!
They hover around flowers and sap wells (made by sapsuckers) and they catch insects in flight, as well as pluck them from leaves.

“PHOTO INFORMATION”

Taken on July 27/08 at 4:06pm, in own back yard.
Taken in Raw & aperture priority
Camera; Canon 20D
Lens; Ef 70-200 f/4, plus Tamron SP AF 1.4X’s teleconverter.
Flash; Speedlite 580 EX ( for fill light)
Tripod; Manfrotto, including joystick head.
Taken at 1/400’s at f/5.6, fill flash, man col balance 5600 kelvin, 280 mm, iso 400.
uploaded in raw to Lightroom2.3, slight histogram adjustment, exported to viveza ( brightened just the bird’s colors up a notch), than in PhotoshopCS2, cropped slightly right, left and top! lol Upsampled slightly and sharpened using lab mode, duplicate layer, lightness channel, unsharpmask ( amount-40, radius-3, threshold-3).