CaroleTurek

The biggest swarm? On my balcony. During the winter I have so many - I have a live cam on five feeders and I have seen 80 birds there at one time. There is a video of this on the YouTube channel. It is hard to believe those little guys sit shoulder to shoulder on those feeders!

Wow. I will answer the last question first - I am mainly about hummingbirds, but I also love raptors. When I go to Panama to photograph hummingbirds, you can be sure I am going to seek out a Harpy Eagle!

I had to cancel a trip to Ecuador this past May and I was going to look for the critically endangered Black-breasted Puffleg. We have rescheduled that one for next year the same time. Upcoming trips are Brazil in September (we will see how that goes) and I will be flying out to Robinson Crusoe Island off the coast of Chile to find the Juan Fernandez Firecrown, another critically endangered species.

The whole photography thing is interesting. Most people don't realize this by looking at my photos, but I just bought my very first DSLR camera in October of 2017. I knew NOTHING about photography before then. I bought an online photography course and invested in a good camera with a good telephoto lens. Fortunately, I have so many hummingbirds here where I live I got a lot of practice photographing them. Hummingbirds are tricky and they do take a lot of practice. My hobby has now become an obsession! Good luck!

Nope. It is my dream to get a sponsor, but I pay for everything now.

I have seen six different species here. Anna's, Allen's, Black-chinned (those three are out there now), Rufous, Calliope and Costa's.

There are a lot of things about hummingbirds that most people do not know . Like their main source of food is insects, not nectar. They are sugar-powered hunters (as a friend of mine has said).