During our visit to the South Coast Botanic Gardens today, this little butterfly perched near the dahlia exhibit. We don’t go to the gardens only for the flowers; we love to see the hummingbirds, butterflies, dragon flies and whatever else happens to come our way.
Click the image for the 1024×768 pixel version.
Here’s some hummers in my back yard http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?UV=308813480247_204928280211&mode=fromsite&collid=256230257111.114107960211.1220805186210&conn_speed=1
and click “Start” for the slide show.
Re: “perched near the dahlia exhibit.” If I’m not mistaken those are lantana leaves and flowers…set me straight.
whoops, That should be “Click on “Play”
YES! You’re right but they are right next to the Dahlias. Are those your hummers? I really enjoyed the pix. What camera did you use and what did you use for the food? We’ve got a couple humming birds but the we’ve never gotten that close to them.
Camera is a Kodak DX 7590 with 10X optical zoom. The food is a simple sugar-water solution (no food coloring!) that is carefully mesaured out by my wife Debbie…think she looked it up on line.
What appears to be a dark grayish sandy substance in the feeder is simply a distorted reflection of the back fence. Some of my shots were taken with the “28 inches or less” setting. I can get quite close to these humming birds. I achieved that by several ways. One way is to have a little patience when you take out the feeder and instead of hanging it right away, just hold it and they will come. Anoter way (and I almost got a shot of this) is to hold a branch suitable for them to land on at arms length…sort of a semi-camoflage.
With the other hand snap some pictures. I think some of those pictures may have the leaves showing in the forground from the branch I’m holding…had one hummer perch on my hand held branch but by the time I got the camera focused it flew off…they’re very fast.
ps: My wife is adament about cleaning the feeder each time she changes it…to prevent mold we use a chlorox solution and rinse very well.
All good info! Thanks I think Ill try some of your technigues.