This Black Tailed Trainbearer was very difficult to photograph, but my friend Dennis and I did our absolute best while up to our knees in tall grassy bushes. We both didn’t know what the word Trainbearer meant so we looked it up. In case you also do not know, a Trainbearer is a person that holds a person’s dress if it is very long and dragging on the ground. That long dress is called a train for some old timey reason I’m sure. Now you can see why someone named this a Hummingbird a Black Tailed Trainbearer.

BAM☺︎

Another shot of the same Ecuadorian Hillstar from all the other posts. I told you that I have many to share. This is actually a photograph of that Hillstar in a sequence with the photograph in the previous post. In that other photograph the Hillstar is taking off from its perch and as it took off I held my shutter button down on my camera and followed it in my view while it dove down. This gave me a series of photographs because my camera takes a lot of photos as the shutter button is held down.

We all know how fast Hummingbirds fly, right? Well if you don’t now then I’ll tell you that they fly very fast. In fact, they are very mobile and are the only type of bird that can also fly backwards (people love to tell me that fact). So following them in my viewfinder while trying to hold down the necessary buttons on my camera is very difficult. It takes a lot of thought process so at the time I do not even know what I end up capturing. This sequence is a very good example of that. I had no idea at the time that this Hillstar was on the hunt. In fact, I would have never even thought that was a possibility as I thought it only ate out of flowers. But I have proof that this Hillstar was hunting because I captured it taking off of its orange perch, swooping down, and opening its mouth directly at a small bug that was flying right in front of it. You may not have even noticed the big in my photograph but it is there, just behind the orange blog on the right. That orange blob is an orange flower that happen to be real close to me and that’s what happens with my lens when its focusing on something a little further. This creates a cool depth effect but also takes up a bit of real estate in my photographs. However, it still manages to capture the little bug that existed behind the orange flowers because it is very good.

I have some bad news though… You may not get to see any more photos in this sequence. The other photos are not as good. The next photograph in this sequence would have been really cool because it is of the Hilltar in another pose as it was about to eat the bug. Unfortunately all that action is behind an orange blob, similar to the bug in this photograph. Therefore it is not very good so I will probably never share it.

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Another shot of the same Ecuadorian Hillstar from the previous post. I took a bunch of photos of the same Hillstar so I’ll have even more to post.

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As mentioned previously, my time in Ecuador was with a small group that was comprised of bird photographers. I enjoy photographing birds but I also like to photograph mammals, insects, landscapes, and anything else in nature that I find interesting and want to share with you. I was very grateful anytime I found a mammal and I did my best to get a decent photograph of it.

We ran into a couple of White Tailed Deer while driving in the Páramo and the group was nice to let me get out and photograph them. These deer were definitely more shy than the Mule Deer that I am used to photographing so they ended up leaving very quickly after I started shooting them. This was very early in the morning as the sun wasn’t even up yet.

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Another shot of the same Ecuadorian Hillstar from the previous post. I took a bunch of photos of the same Hillstar so I’ll have even more to post.

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High in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador lives this Ecuadorian Hillstar. Known as the Páramo, the ecosystem which this Hillstar lives is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It has a desert like feel to it due to the types of plant that grow there but the Páramo only exists at an elevation of around 10,000-13,000 feet so it’s very high in elevation and fairly cold. In fact, the nearby volcano was covered in a lot of snow. My friend Dennis, who was the organizer of the birding photography tour that I was a part of in Ecuador, and I were mesmerized by the Páramo and I think that it was both of our favorite places we visited in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian Hillstar only lives in the Páramo regions which seems like it would be rough on a small hummingbird but there are plenty of flowers around for it to sustain itself.

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For my trip to Ecuador I was one of six people in a birding photography guided tour. Because it was a birding photography tour the main focus was finding and photography cool and rare birds. However, since I love photographing all types of animals, I did my best to take photographs of mammals, insects, and anything else I could find that I thought was interesting. I tried to take the best photograph I could of that subject. In this instance, these Llama were very far away and walking away from my direction so getting their faces in a shot was challenging. This was the best photograph I could get of them and this was the only time I was fortunate to see Llama while visiting Ecuador.

Some photographs I share are definitely not award winning and I’m well aware of that. But my Field Notes section is sometimes used to just document some of my travels and they will include photographs that are more documentary style.

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You may not know what an Antipitta is but here is an example one. This is a very special example though because the Giant Antpitta is the largest of all Antpitta species. They are also very elusive and rarely seen. Well, generally rarely seen. Our local guide Andy knows where this Antipitta is located and his family even named it Maria. That’s not to say that it is seen all the time but knowing the area where it lives is definitely an advantage.

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This Strong Billed Woodcreeper was using its namesake to dig out bugs in this tree and I captured the perfect moment where it threw one of them up right before swallowing it.

BAM☺︎