In April, I guided a group of photographers on a three day instructional photo tour into southeast Arizona.  I’d always heard about how great the birding and bird diversity are in that place, but seeing is believing.

With the heavy rains throughout last summer, autumn and winter, the vegetation was lush and the birds were scattered.  Water was abundant so the bird concentrations were not as good as usual.

The weather was great.  Our cabins were at about 5,000 feet so the temperatures were really nice.  If I’d known how hot it was going to get in south Texas this year, I might have stayed on in Arizona.

The group did a lot of photography at my high-speed flash setup for hummingbirds.  Because the birds were scattered, we only got three species of hummers…blue-throated, broad-billed and black-chinned.  Everybody got tons of good images at the setup, however.

Click on an image to enlarge and sharpen it.  Click on the right edge of each photo to bring up the next image.

This male black-chinned hummingbird was photographed with natural light at 1/400 second, f4 @ ISO 640 with the new Canon 7D II.

My first hepatic tanager (above) was shy but posed for a few images.

These painted redstart photos were my first, too.  This hyper little bird was feeding young, but allowed our entire group to stand on the walking trail and photograph.  Talking about a difficult exposure…a black and white bird with a red breast.

I left that magnificent hummingbird dream photo out in Arizona, but just seeing it was a big reward for the effort.

Larry