4K hummer video

Reminder: I'm now posting mostly at facebook.com/bhhummingbird. The Sanctuary is closed to the public.

Fred

return to the sanctuary

Arrived back at the sanctuary, and busy filming:

Hummers and Century Plant

Century plants (Agave americana) are abundant on Eleuthera and when they flower (once in their lifetime, and usually after 30 not 100 years) they attract hummingbirds. The flower stalk is about 30 feet high and the plant dies as it flowers. Here's one along the oceanfront

Here's a general view of the flower

and here are 2 clips of hummers feeding at it:

A second Century Plant is blooming in the back garden at Calypso, and a juvenile male Woodstar hummingbird is guarding it:

In the final clip, this young male attacks a hummer that starts feeding on "his" flowers:

Great Lizard Cuckoo eats Cassie's Chick

Sad news. This morning at 7.30 the chick was on the edge of the nest and I filmed the mother feeding him. 

Then I filmed the chick:

10 minutes later I returned to the nest, but it was wrecked, the chick was gone, and a Great Lizard Cuckoo was in the tree a few feet away, still swallowing something.

Perching before feeding

When Cassie, the Bahama Woodstar mother hummingbird whose nest I'm monitoring, arrives to feed her young, she usually perches nearby before flying to the nest itself, on the look-out for potential predators. Usually she chooses a spot I cannot easily film, but today I could:-

 When she took off she flew directly to the nest and started feeding the babies:

Eggs Hatched!

I'm calling the female Bahama Woodstar hummingbird that's nesting in a casuarina tree "Cassie". Her eggs have finally hatched and she's busy feeding the tiny babies (probably 2 of them).

Hummers in the Bahamas

Since Christmas I've been at our winter place "Calypso" on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, and have rather neglected this blog. I see hummingbirds here every day - the local variety known as the Bahama Woodstar, which is even smaller than the ruby-throat, though rather similar in appearance and behavior. However, the male's throat is purple rather than red:

Yesterday, march 2, I spotted an active nest, about 12 feet off the ground in a casuarina tree:

The mother seems to be incubating eggs. Here are more videos, shot today march 3:

summer hummer close-up; climbing roses

It froze at the sanctuary and a number of flowers are dead, but some are still hanging on, though I think the predicted Thanksgiving deep-freeze will finish them off. I'm planting more antique climbing roses at the base of the little cherry-trees, after having grown them on from tiny plants  in pots throughout the summer on the deck, away from the depredations of the numerous deer. Now they are big enough to train up the tree-trunks. Then I wrap them up in chicken wire cages. I now have at least 20 climbing up cherry-trees, and in mid-june (and only then) they put on quite a show. Here's another clip of a hummer feeding at Black-and-Blue, this time closer-up (or is it close-upper?).

Late, and very late.

I thought this was my last hummer of the season (filmed oct 12)

But then, after a long gap, this ruby-throat showed up on nov 4:

I've not see it since but then I've not been much at the sanctuary recently.

Still Some Hummers

I shot these clips on sunday october 7. The first one is in 4K

and this one the day before

Monarch Madness

Lots of monarchs here at the moment:

Posing Nicely

Shrimp Plant perching, feeding

This hummer often perches near a feeder at the extreme northwest corner of the garden, overlooking Long Island Sound and the beach far below. I often live-stream this view (at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvTj9WdD0zItyBLI6m-U9Og/live?&ab_channel=FredSmith and at facebook.com/bhhummingbird) but the live-streams are of poor quality/resolution (often only 360P) because of my limited internet bandwidth. So here's a short clip of this area filmed with my handheld SONY camcorder. At first the hummer is perching on a twig of the shrimp plant, he then feeds at a couple of the flowers, then at the feeder, and finally I zoom out to show the view.

Hummer-Canna Close-Up; Visiting

Here's a close-up view of a hummer feeding at canna flowers.

The sanctuary is private and NOT OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. However friends, old and new, are welcome to visit - but please by appointment only!

Hummers fighting over Canna

I've been mostly posting at Facebook, but here's a recent video at the sanctuary, with 2 hummers arguing over who gets the canna flowers. 

Daniel Hauben painting at the sanctuary again

Once again Daniel Hauben is painting at the sanctuary - here are a couple of the pastel canvases he's working on. We are also livestreaming Danny at work!

Fred close-up

Internet was Down - catching up

Rain caused a problem somewhere far away on my phone line, and internet was down for 3 days. Here are a few recent vids.

Fred direct

The livestreams from the sanctuary are rather blurry, but this is mainly due to the digital zooming I'm forced to do because Fred's perch is 100 feet away from the camera, rather than due to my very limited upload bandwidth. Here's a part of today's livestream but the recording was done direct to the disc on the camera rather than via the Youtube livestream process. This recording was then slowly uploaded to Youtube, but here the bandwidth isn't a limiting factor, yet the video is almost as blurry as the livestreams.
One possible way to avoid this problem would be to use a more powerful telephoto lens, in conjunction with a interchangeable lens camera, but this could be very expensive, and clearly would not work as long as my upload bandwidth is poor. I had hoped to install satellite internet (Viasat) but unfortunately this cannot be done on the roof of the back cabin because of trees, It can be done on the roof of the front cabin, but unfortunately I'm having this re-roofed because a racoon made a large hole up there, and this process keeps getting delayed because of the possibility of rain.