Awesome pix. Thanks.

tj

Nice photos. I love how you managed to capture the attitude of the Allen's. I have resident Allen's and Anna's, and they are both feisty. Costa's are really pretty, but I usually have to drive to the desert to see them. The white really makes that purple stand out and shine.

Fantastic photos Zach! We only have ruby throated hummers here in Indiana. They show up here the first week in May. I love them!! If I'm out watering the flowers or my garden, sometimes they show up and I change the hose flow to a shower, and they love getting under it! May I ask what kind of camera you use?

Thanks guys! Gyr, your not kidding! I'm familiar with the Allen's close relative the rufous, and these are a couple feisty species! This guy had a male Costa's that was trying ti share the chuparosa that he was hanging around and the Allen's seemed to take it a little too personally.

The Costa's don't live around me either. I'm surrounded by alphalpha and cotton fields and like you said, they are a hummingbird of the desert, feeding in creosote and ocotillo blooms. They are pretty common around the edges of Phoenix, the Desert Botanical Garden on the east side of town has quite a few of them and folks out in Apache Junction get them at their feeders all the time.

Well, we don't have ruby throated out here in the west, in Colorado we pretty much only saw broad tailed in our yard, although an occasional rufous did pass through as well and I think black chinned lived on the other side of the mountains. I never got them to use the hose though! They were too busy chasing each other away from my penstemons and agastaches (I quit putting up the feeder since they never used it, they only used the flowers).

I use a Canon eos rebel xsi that turns 10 years old this year. But my real baby is the 100-400 mm lense that I use for birds. Course "real" wildlife photographers laugh at my baby set up haha.

IMO it is more difficult to take quality wildlife photos without long, fast lenses and fancy flash units. I'd love to have a 100-400mm to work with--my longest is a 70-210mm on a 12yo low-end Nikon. Longer haha. ;)

Arizona is such a wonderful birding state. I drifted away from birding to embrace other hobbies, but the memories remain.

Zach.....I have a Canon eos Rebel XTi. Most of the time, I use a 70/300mm lens. I have to admit, I pretty much just point and shoot. I'm ashamed that I haven't learned much about the camera. It doesn't seem good enough for getting real close-up (tele-photo) shots. Maybe I'll check out the one you have. I had considered getting a better zoom lens, but it's so heavy, I wasn't sure my arthritic fingers could hold it up. Oh....I just looked up your lens and that's probably the one I thought might be too heavy. You sure have some great pics there.

I started out taking wildlife (or any) photos with my parents little home digital camera. I would go out and get pictures of waterfowl at the local park with it. They are large, tame, and common and therefore easy targets:

They also live in water and one fateful day the little pocket camera got left in my pocket when I decided to get a little too familiar with the habitat. I didn't pick up another camera for several years afterwards. They were expensive and I kind of moved on to other things.

Then when I was stationed in Hawaii I went to the PX (which is the military version of a Wal-Mart) and bought a Canon PowerShot, which is a high end point and shoot. First off it was more technologically advanced than the first edition 4 megapixel digital camera my parents had for taking snapshots at Christmas and vacations and it had features that allowed more user control like manual mode where I could set aperture and shutter speed:

This was my main camera for a couple years until I left it in my brothers car which got towed and the impound lot stole it.

At the same time I had the PowerShot is when I bought the full DSLR Eos Rebel that I use now. But I was so used to the PowerShot I never really used the Rebel until after the other one was stolen. I got away from nature/wildlife photography while I was in Hawaii (which I now kick myself for). But not long after moving back to Colorado I went on Amazon and got a 150$ 75-200mm zoom lense that was all I used for years and I have some actually not horrible shots from it:

I am still 100% an amateur myself. But I will say that learning to overcome the limitations of your equipment rather than going out and dumping your life savings on the biggest and best right out of the chute probably makes for better photographs. So does learning the fundementals of what makes good pictures. Things like composition and lighting. A big fancy lense or the newest top of the line camera can't compensate for those things no matter how expensive they are. The one thing I have always believed is that the most important thing is the person behind the camera rather than the camera itself.

These lessons are probably true for just about anything we do in life.

LOL........sounds like you lost your share of cameras, Zach. Did you fall into the lake? I had a sure shot too. I've saved all my cameras....including the Brownie Starlight and the old Polaroid....and many others since. My kids used to make fun of my Sure Shot.........when I'd take pics of them in a play or a concert, the camera would make a huge noise as it advanced. haha Your pics are great! Funny, how good the iPhone pics can be. A friend of mine asked her photography course prof what the best camera was, and he said "the one you have with you at the time." I've taken soooooo many pics with my iPhone, that I just wouldn't have gotten otherwise.