Ruby-throated Hummingbird II

I didn't realize until I began to post this photo how it is almost a duplicate of yesterday's image, even though quite a bit of time had passed between capturing the two.  Notwithstanding, I would like to make a couple of photography-related comments and a couple of species-related comments.

To freeze a hummingbird's wing, the shutter speed should be in excess of 1/1000th of a second, which requires a good deal of light.  In the shady area where our feeder is located in the fading afternoon light, the best I could manage in this image was 1/180th second - slow enough to make their wings disappear.  But, if you happen to catch the wing at it's apex of movement when it is about to return in the opposite direction, you can record some semblance of the wing.  You can't time this, however, if you can catch it, at least you won't have a wingless body floating in air.

Also, the better built the lens, the more pleasingly rendered an out-of-focus background will appear.  This is because more leaves are used to manufacture the shutter, causing the "bokeh" (the blurred circles in the background) to appear rounder and more pleasing.

I've said more than I meant to and I'll save the species-related comments for tomorrow.