Anna’s Hummingbird at Felt Lake
Early Sunday Morning,
April 8th, our class journeyed to Felt Lake just above Stanford Campus with the
purpose of photographing nature. The gated reserve is home to trout and bass,
cows, mushrooms, mockingbirds, bald eagles, and more. It is part of the
Arastradero Preserve north of Arastradero Road and features a scenic loop trail
which we walked, discovering new photography subjects at every turn.
We
saw several species of birds defending their territories, perched or hovering
above their chosen tree. But it was not the mockingbird or even the bald eagle
that captured my imagination so much as the Anna’s hummingbird that sang and
danced with stunning acrobatics above a young oak tree near the edge of the
lake. In addition to his lithe movement, his intense green-feathered colors
were punctuated by a flashing red that appeared around his head at certain
moments. It was quite a challenge for a beginner like me to release the shutter
of the camera just at the exact moment that his movement glowed red. But with
determination, one shot finally captured his flaming head. I had bracketed the
shots by speed, testing out a range of shutter speeds from 1/400th of a
second to 1/800th of a second, using my full 300mm zoom with f/13 aperture and,
since we had bright light, a film setting ISO of 800. The shot that captured
his split second display of red feathers was made with a 1/6400th of a second,
using my full 300mm zoom, and an aperture of f/13. But it probably would have
worked to use a number of other settings as getting his display seemed more a
matter of timing the shot since this Anna Hummingbird’s activity came in
spurts.
Identification of the
Anna Hummingbird came late, and I would have made an error had it not been for
the helpful support of a new website organization called inaturalist. Excited
by the day’s events, I had gone right to work writing my slideshow for the next
day. I found a webpage displaying a red necked hummingbird called the
Ruby-Throated hummingbird and was convinced that he was my guy, given the
bright red display I had recorded on film. Just to be sure I joined
iNaturalist.org and posted my photo, a step I had better understood after
talking with a classmate on the leisurely walk around Felt lake. I went to bed
content, but when I awoke I discovered an email leading to my account, which
now contained not one but five clear identifications of my hummingbird image as
that of Anna’s Hummingbird. I not only learned to check the area where the
organism is known to live, but I also understood how powerful and dedicated is
the community of amateur and professional ornithologists who cooperate to
compile knowledge about birds here and elsewhere.
Researching Anna’s
hummingbird was fascinating, and revealed its complex adaptations for flight
that allowed the bird’s helicoptor-like control in flight as well as his
distinct color. Professor Siegel also explained the physics of color pigment
versus color that came from a physical manipulation of the light as it hits the
bird’s feathers, like light recoiling from a soap bubble. I felt it redundant
to cover this too much in my report
instead I focused my story on the technology of the wing
action which turned out to follow a complex figure eight pattern. As I looked
into this, I found that developers of renewable energy had based their wind
turbine designs on the design of hummingbird wings. To find so much detail
below the surface was astounding, and has made me walk by many more natural
occurrences with more wonder and interest. I can’t stop looking at small
spiders without wondering about new mysteries that might top learning how the
hummingbirds take sticky strands to cement their nests which is just one
example of how closely interrelated and intertwined organisms can be, and how
close we probably are to some of our smaller natural neighbors.
- Ariana Baltay
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