Hummingbirds and Royal Catchfly

 

A female American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) with a bill full of plant down. The vegan "wild canaries" are late nesters, with July and August peak breeding months. This one was building a nest in a nearby thicket. The colorful males do not assist. They are too busy chasing one another and delivering their impressive sky songs. While so engaged, the male arcs lazily about with slow shallow wing beats, all the while gushing forth an exceptionally ebullient song.

I photographed that goldfinch at Huffman Prairie during a visit on July 22. The 100-acre prairie is at its colorful peak from mid0July into August, and one of the botanical showstoppers is Royal Catchfly (Silene regia). This statuesque prairie plant attracts a very special little bird, and my main mission was to shoot them at catchfly plants.

A female Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) approaches a Royal Catchfly. It is thought to be the catchfly's only effective pollinator. The brilliant red flowers are irresistible to hummingbirds, and the sprites swarm Huffman Prairie at this season. Battles over catchfly are frequent. More than a few times I would have a hummingbird in my sights, ready to snap away, when another hummer would roar in and punk my subject. A speedy aerial chase would ensue, with the combatants sometimes spiraling high into the air.

I arrived not long after dawn, and it didn't take long to spot a hummingbird. My modus operandi here is to find a nice patch of catchfly, with at least a few unobstructed exceptionally tall catchflies towering above the snarl of colorful prairie wildflowers. One does not normally have to wait long for photo ops in such a situation. Shooting hummingbirds visiting the red-flowered catchflies wasn't too tough on this day, but I had a more challenging goal in mind.

Mission accomplished! A Ruby-throated Hummingbird visits the flowers of a very rare pink or salmon-colored form of Royal Catchfly. This variant is exceedingly scarce, and even at Huffman Prairie with all its catchfly, probably only 1 percent or less of the plants are this form.

To expand upon my tactics outlined above, I try to find a large, pink-flowered catchfly surrounded by typical, red-flowered plants. Such a situation offers the best of both worlds. I will likely snag images of the birds at red flowers and may get the opportunity to shoot them at the rare form as well. And luck was with me on this day, and I got both types of shots.

PHOTOGRAPHY NOTES: I shot these images with my Canon 800mm f/5.6 on the Canon R5 mirrorless body, mounted on a Gitzo tripod with Wimberly head. The R5 has made such tasks easier. Its Auto Intelligence focusing feature grabs moving subjects with astonishing rapidity and locks onto them. Even fast-moving hummingbirds. The big lens allows for a fairly expansive swath of habitat to be covered. I can work out to around 30-40 feet in any direction and even at the outer reaches of my sphere, get usable images. As hummingbirds are nearly fearless, they will sometimes come into plants well within my lens's minimum focus of 19 feet. Sometimes birds will come within 5 feet! Occasionally a hummingbird will roar in and hover about eye level and remain there for a few seconds, staring at me. I suppose they are trying to figure out what the large biped with the funny gizmo is doing in their prairie.

Anyway, flash is key when shooting hummingbirds as it helps freeze movement and causes the birds' feather iridescence to pop. I use a Canon 600mm speedlite and a Better Beamer flash extender. The fresnel lens of the latter can throw usable light out about as far as I can shoot the hummers. I learned of a new peril involving fresnel lenses on this day. At one point I small an acrid burning odor. As there is a gun range in the distance, I thought it might be the smell of discharged firearms drifting over. No. I had left my camera rig pointing so the sun was shining right through the fresnel lens. Like a magnifying glass it greatly amplified the sun's rays causing my lens's camouflage lens coat to start smoldering. Easy fix: just remember not to align the Better Beamer with the sun.

Camera settings were mostly ISO 800 to 100, 1/4000 shutter speed, and f/8. The flash must be set to high-speed sync mode, of course, to allow it to function at shutter speeds beyond the sync speed of 1/200. The trade-off of going faster than sync speed is a great drop-off in light output from the flash. Enter the Better Beamer. Its light amplification allows one to throw the light far afield and hit distant objects.

Hummingbirds and Royal Catchfly

A Ruby-throated Hummingbird plunges its long swordlike bill deep into the corolla of a Royal Catchfly, Silene regia, flower. Hummingbirds are the primary pollinators of this beautiful prairie plant.

I promised in the last post to share a few photos of the fruits of my hummingbird photography labors. Last Thursday, July 20, I was at Huffman Prairie near Dayton, Ohio shortly after dawn. I knew the catchfly would be at peak flowering, and this would mean lots of hummingbirds. There are few if any better situations in which to photograph Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, and as that was probably the only day I'd get a crack at this, for this year at least, I wasn't going to waste it.

Botanist Thomas Nuttall, a man who had seen a tremendous spectrum of our flora, called the royal catchfly "one of the most splendid species in existence." Adding to its allure is the fact that Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are its primary pollinator. Standing in a large prairie dotted with the scarlet spikes of catchfly, with numerous hummingbirds darting about tending to the colorful flowers, is near magical.

Even if I never attempted a photo, I'd still savor the time spent watching these feathered sprites shooting about the rich prairie, tapping nectar from catchfly plants, snapping tiny insects from the air, and constantly sparring with one another. The sheer aggressiveness of these elfin birds is astonishing. As often as not, I'd be setting up on a hummer that starting exploring a plant's flowers, when another bird would strafe in at top speed and send my photo subject packing. Occasional, two birds would get in a real dust-up, spiraling up, up, and up, chittering and buzzing around each other until they were tiny specks in the sky.

Royal Catchfly flowers are normally the brilliant scarlet of those in the preceding photo. However, a very small number of plants at Huffman Prairie sport these gorgeous pale pink blossoms. I've only seen this variant one or two other places, both in Ohio prairies. It apparently does occur very sparingly in a few locales outside of Ohio.

I picked my photo spot carefully. The patch of trail that I set up on had plenty of normal catchfly plants, including a few large sentinels. Best of all, though, were two nearby fine pink-flowered specimens. I figured that sooner or later, a hummingbird would visit these botanical oddities and give me a chance to shoot it in the act of going pink. Sure enough, I did get a few opportunities and the shot above is one of the successful attempts.

Photographing hummingbirds isn't easy, and requires considerable patience. At least if you're shooting them in the wild, on their own terms - not at a feeder. I spent about four hours, mostly in the same spot, awaiting opportunities. None of it is time wasted. One learns tons about hummingbird behavior by doing this. Plus, bonuses abounded. A Dickcissel chattered its song from nearby high-rise plant stalks the entire time. Bobolinks passed overhead, giving their mellow pink pink call notes. The soft insectlike hiccup of a male Henslow's Sparrow provided aural accompaniment. Two rival Common Yellowthroat males routinely launched into their flight songs, ascending about 25 feet vertically into the air all the while delivering a more ornate version of their song, then fluttering feet down back into the vegetation.

I tried a new tactic with equipment this time, screwing on my Canon 800mm lens to the 5D IV. More is better, you know. It was overkill, and I probably won't use it again for hummers. That lens has a minimum focusing distance of about 19 feet, and on several occasions hummers came much closer than that, sipping from nearby flowers and offering what would have been awesome shots with a lesser lens. I've got a smaller, lighter 500mm that focuses to 7.5 feet, acquires focus faster, and is just as razor sharp. That's the lens for hummers, at least in a situation like this. Fill flash came from a single on-camera Canon 600 II speedlite intensified with a Better Beamer, all of this equipment atop a tripod, of course. I used shutter speeds ranging from 1/2000 to 1/3200, depending on lighting conditions. On high speed sync mode and at shutter speeds above the 1/200 sync speed, the flash loses a ton of intensity, and its working distance becomes ever shorter the higher the shutter speed goes. ISO becomes the ruling factor - I don't like running it beyond perhaps 1600, and am much happier with 800 and below. Nonetheless, even though these images were made at ISO's over 1000, they still look pretty clean and noise-free even without much post-processing work. I also shot the lens wide open - f/5.6 - to permit entry of as much light as possible.

Huffman Prairie, catchflys, and hummingbirds

Sunrise over Huffman Prairie, as seen last Friday. This 100(ish) acre prairie patch is located at the south end of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.

Dave Nolin, recently retired Director of Conservation for Five Rivers Metroparks, sent me a few photos of the prairie last week. It looked so spectacular, just nearing peak bloom, that I couldn't wait to go see it in person. So, I took Friday off and was there before daybreak. So amazing was the place that I went back for an encore on Sunday morning. Some photos from these excursions follow.

Major kudos go to the management of the giant air force base for their support of Huffman Prairie, which sits on their property. Double kudos to Dave Nolin, who spent the better part of three decades working with the base to provide the best possible management for the prairie. All that long hard work is bearing major fruit today, as we shall see. Even though Dave has left the helm at Five Rivers Metroparks, the staff there continues with the fine work.

On the prairie's south edge sits this replica of the Wright Brother's original hangar - yes, those Wrights, Orville and Wilbur! This is the site where they researched and improved their aircraft, and where many early test flights took place. By 1910, a mere seven years after their inaugural flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they had founded the Wright Flying School at Huffman Field. Today, flying machines representing the current pinnacle of aviation routinely fly the skies over the huge air force base just north of this hangar.

In a delicious irony, Barn Swallows fill the Wright Brothers hangar with their nests instead of artificial flying machines. These feathered speedsters are incredible aeronauts, and one might argue that no manmade flying machine can rival their flight skills.

Now, I'm sure, you'll understand why I was in a hurry to get there! A sea of coneflowers, catchfly, blazing-stars and scores of other prairie plants create a fantastic palette of color.

Standing out like crimson beacons is the Royal Catchfly, Silene regia, this one embedded in a cushion of Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea. The catchfly is a pure prairie plant, and never have I seen so much of it in one locale.

To Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Royal Catchfly is irresistible. If there are any hummers about, you can be sure that sooner than later the catchfly's brilliant blossoms will draw them over. On Friday, I guesstimated (an accurate estimate is probably impossible) that at least 100 hummingbirds were present, and likely far more than that. At times, I would see 6 or 8 birds from one spot, and that's a big prairie with scads of catchfly.

A female hummingbird dips deep into the flower's corolla, seeking nectar rewards. The catchfly has coevolved with long-billed hummingbirds. The flowers do not have stiff petals (landing pads) and thus the core of the flower is inaccessible to many insects, other than swallowtail butterflies. Furthermore, the sticky gluelike calyx (the green and white striped tube below the flower) prevents access to climbing insects. But these little feathered helicopters have no difficulty at all in dealing with catchfly flowers, and work them speedily and efficiently. The birds are probably their most important pollinators.

A camera's eye view of the prairie. I picked a prime spot with many catchfly plants in fairly close proximity, including several "signal tower" plants - catchflys that were much taller than most of the surrounding vegetation and thus great lures to feeding hummers. The flash rig atop the camera allowed me to send soft fill flash out to about 50-60 feet, giving me a good radius to work in.

Once I had my spot picked, I just stayed there. Five hours on Friday, and about four hours on Sunday. Obtaining crisp photos of feeding hummingbirds is no easy task. I find it is best to stay quietly in one spot, and let them come to me. Which they did, on a regular basis. About a dozen times, a nearby hummingbird would suddenly take notice of me and the camera, shoot about ten feet straight up in the air and move closer, and hover for a few seconds obviously checking me out. About half the time, they'd decide they didn't like the large invader and shoot off to some more distant flowers. The other times, they'd seemingly decide I was OK and drop right back down and commence feeding.

I have little problem remaining immobile for long periods when the surrounding environment is as interesting as this prairie. A Blue Grosbeak made the rounds, serenading me with its forceful finchy warble. Two local Common Yellowthroat males routinely delivered their fabulous aerial flight songs at close range. Bobolinks occasionally darted overhead, issuing their pleasing musical pink! pink! call notes. Young Eastern Cottontails nibbled on succulents just down the path. Giant Swallowtails coursed by, and one female paused nearby to deposit eggs on a wafer-ash. And on went the wildlife parade, nonstop. Plus, it was a great opportunity to observe the habits of the hummingbirds. They are easily among our most feisty animals, and if a Ruby-throated Hummingbird was the size of a swan, we'd be in serious trouble. Were they that big, I'm sure I would have been impaled and tossed aside for my transgressions into their turf. As often as not, a hummer would just have set up perfectly for a photo, when another would whir by and the fight would be on! The birds would chase one other at top speed across the prairie, sometimes shooting high into the sky. At one point, an American Robin had the temerity to attempt to wing over the prairie, and a hummingbird (outmassed by 25 times by the comparatively huge thrush) immediately launched skyward and sent it packing.

From a photography perspective, trying to capture hummingbird photos is fun and challenging. The birds are often rather unpredictable, and usually don't remain at any given flower for more than a few seconds. One must learn to be fast on the trigger and smooth and accurate in tracking the fast-moving quarry. When all goes reasonably well, photos such as this one can result. I FAR prefer shooting the birds on native wildflowers than feeders, too.

Interspersed with the typical catchfly plants were a number of specimens of this variant, a salmon-colored form. This is a decidedly rare type, and I've only seen it in a handful of spots, and always in very low numbers. One of the reasons that I picked the stakeout spot that I did was because an exceptionally large and striking salmon plant was within close distance (the plant in the photo). To capture a hummingbird nectaring at one of these flowers would be exceptional, probably the best trophy photo one could get in this place. So, I kept an exceptionally close watch for hummers moving in on the salmon catchfly.

Yes! After several hummer visits to the salmon catchfly and an equal number of missed photo opportunities, I finally managed this one image. While not technically my best effort, the photo is OK and can (and will) be improved upon later. The image above is a quick edit of the jpeg. I shot this with my Canon 5DS-R, and the RAW file of this shot is about 70 megabytes and that allows for some wonderful tweaking of imperfections.

If you get the opportunity to visit Huffman Prairie in the next week or two, do it. The prairie will still be looking magnificent, and you're sure to see plenty of hummingbirds and other critters.

Sedge Wrens at historic Huffman Prairie

This innocuous looking field is the most famous place in aviation history. It was here that two famous brothers from Dayton, Orville and Wilbur Wright, learned to fly. Sure, their first powered flights took place at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903, but the following year the brothers returned to Dayton, Ohio, and fine-tuned their flying machines on this very field.

Adjacent to the flying field is famous Huffman Prairie, and it, like the Wright Brothers' airfield, is part of the massive Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The base houses some of the most sophisticated aircraft in the world. Incredible how far aviation has come in just over a century.

But I was not here to study the history of aircraft. I had not been to the 100-acre Huffman Prairie in a long time, and had been hearing all about how great it looked this year. So, a few Sundays back I headed to Dayton and met up with Grace Cochran of Five Rivers MetroParks, which serves the Dayton area. She was willing to give me a tour of the prairie, which her park district has a big hand in managing along with the air force base and the Ohio Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. Later, we were joined by Dave Nolin, the park district's Conservation Director and a longtime friend. It was a great trip, and we ended up spending many hours exploring the prairie.

Rich dark soil - REAL prairie soil! - is the bedrock of the prairie, and much of the general area. Indeed, the Wright Brothers' airfield was a wet fen back in Orville and Wilbur's day, and they often lamented the soggy quagmire when it was at its wettest.

The reports were true - the prairie looked spectacular. Much more diverse and forb-filled than I remembered from previous visits. Everyone involved in its management deserves major kudos.

In this shot, Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, and Big Bluestem, Andropogon gerardii, dominate but plenty of other botanical diversity is visible in the scene.

Photo: Dave Nolin

Had I only been there three weeks prior! That's when Dave made the stunning image above. Remember that for next year - if you wish to visit Huffman Prairie, angle for the tail end of July or the first week in August.

Purple Coneflower is one of the most conspicuous prairie flowers, and it attracts legions of pollinating insects.

We were routinely sidetracked by interesting insects, such as this Delicate Cycnia moth caterpillar, Cycnia tenera. It is a dogbane specialist, and dogbane is closely related to milkweed (which are now considered part of the dogbane family, Apocynaceae). This photo tells a few stories. We can see the toxic white latex seeping from a leaf scar. Relatively few caterpillars can ingest that stuff, but the cycnia has cracked dogbane's chemical code. The fuzzy grayish-brown caterpillar looks nice and fresh. That's because it just molted into its final instar, or growth stage. The cast-off skin of its last stage is to the left. Most caterpillars go through five instars before reaching the final stage. Next stop: Cocoon.

We were pleased to find this beautiful specimen of a Fork-tailed Bush Katydid, Scudderia furcata.The larger katydids are often tame and confiding, and easy to coax onto one's finger. They are attracted to salts, and will rasp off the outer epidermal layer of your skin, as Grace is finding out in this photo. It isn't painful; just a funny nibbling sensation. Note the animal's ears - those dark oval dimples just below the knees on the forelegs.

This was a nice find, indeed, although the backdrop left something to be desired. It is an Orange-spotted Pyrausta, Pyrausta orphisalis, savoring the delights of coyote scat. These colorful day-flying moths resemble small butterflies.

Almost as soon as we entered the prairie, birds grabbed our attention. Squadrons of Bobolinks coursed over the meadow, issuing their softly melodic pink calls. We were constantly serenaded by electric blue Indigo Buntings, incessant motormouths that they are: Fire fire, where where, here here, see see, put it out put it out! The harsh tshacks! of Common Yellowthroats were hurled our way from thickets, the rotund warblers infuriated at our tresspass. I was surprised and pleased to hear a Blue Grosbeak, quite the rarity in this region, singing its rich finchlike song. We later spotted the bird perched atop a sign.

But perhaps best of all, avian-wise, were the Sedge Wrens. As we penetrated deeper into the prairie, we began to hear the males' staccato chatter, which suggests a poorly running sewing machine. These are secretive rather mousey birds prone to foraging, and even singing, in dense cover. Eventually we spotted one as it flew from perch to perch.

After a while, we were rewarded with excellent looks, and in all detected five singing males. Sedge Wrens often form loose colonies, and if one is found, more will likely be present. In Ohio, they are rare and local breeders, and always a treat to encounter. In our area, at least, the name is a bit of a misnomer. Sedge Wrens most often occur in grasslands - not sedge-filled wetlands - from my experience. The scientific name is Cistothorus platensis, and the genus name roughly translates to "shrub leaper". Where I find them every spring in northern Michigan, that name is apropos - they are often in sedge meadows laced with alder thickets.

In Ohio, Sedge Wrens often don't appear on territory until mid-July or even early August. It is thought that these are birds that already bred at more northerly latitudes, or in the prairie states and provinces to the west. Following that, the wrens move south and east, and nest again in entirely new locales, both in terms of habitat and geography.

Thanks again to Grace and Dave for the tour, and an excellent day in one of Ohio's best prairies.