Most Amazing Hummingbird MATING Ritual - 600 FPS slow motion

Most of this video was taken in one single shot of a male black chinned hummingbird doing a ritualistic "U" dive to impress a female in the tree. During this dive, the male hummingbird makes a whistling sound, not from his vocal cords but his tail feathers. In this instance, the male did at least 10 "U dives" diving down, shooting into the sky, turning around and diving back down again.




I was actually lucky to capture ANY of this video as I could not track the speeding bird with much luck. However, since I was filming at 600 frames a second, if I happened to capture the bird for only a split second, I would have 5 or 10 seconds of usable footage.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• hummingbird
• sing
• with
• their
• tail
• feathers
• time
• warp
• birds
• black
• chinned
• feeder
• manuvering
• slow
• motion
• casio
• exilim
• photography
• high
• speed
• fighting

[jcmegabyte]

This is just amazing! :-O That fact that you could get any frames at ALL of the bird in the dive is astounding! In all the years I've watched the males U-dive with the naked eye, I've never been able to follow them at the bottom of the dive or had any idea of their wing motion at high speed. It seems they do a lot more gliding and wings-tucked-in falling than I expected. Great job! :-)

[taofledermaus]

It surprised me when I reviewed the clip I filmed. The hummer did about 7 or 8 U-dives on another hummer hiding in a tree so I could only TRY to follow the diving bird with the camera. If I caught 1/4 second of the bird, that's 5 seconds in HS. Since the camera locks all settings once you start filming, I don't know how the bird stayed in focus at all- I either had a small aperature or set the camera for infinity focus. It really is cool to see how differently the hummer flies.

[jcmegabyte]

I was thinking that the wing motion reminded me of a White-Throated Swift (related to Hummers) and at other times of a Peregrine Falcon in high powered flight. The more ways you look at these little birds the more interesting they are! :-)

[taofledermaus]

I'm trying to post some examples of the capabilities of this camera with you in mind. Where the camera doesn't excel in resolution and clarity, it does a good job capturing movement you'd miss with anything else. When I review footage I took that I thought I had not shot anything special, I very often had captured some surprising stuff.

[ryukenosuke]

Man, I love this video. Humming birds are almost surreal. I'd easily believe that this one was digitally created if you told me it was. ^_^

[taofledermaus]

Some of the shots don't even look like hummingbirds. I really could not track this hummingbird at all. I just TRIED to track it by pointing the camera haphazardly in the air and was able to get it into the field for a split second or two. I filmed a LOT of sky, and very little of the bird!  Thanks bro!

[dodiese09]

Incroyable !! Magnifique !!

[HummingbirdSociety]

Interesting to me is the visible fanning of the tail. When the Anna's does this (documented in just the past two years) it makes a VERY loud "Snap!". When I've seen the BCHU do this, there is a sound at the base of the dive that is more like a warble, a tone of constant pitch modulated in amplitude maybe 4-5 times per second. After viewing this clip, I now think that sound is also somehow tied to the fanned tail. The Anna's dive is much higher speed (I recall up to 60 MPH at the peak speed).

[cusanusnicolas]

Maybe I didn't watch carefully enough, but this isn't nearly as cool as the U dives I watched many times as a kid of the ruby throated, and you need sound to get the whole picture. When they dive, it sounds like a siren coming, then when the direction suddenly reverses at the bottom, you hear a POP, just like a whip crack. Yeah. That was the 50s, no video then, and I'd be lucky to scrape up $10 in a year and avoid getting killed on the playground.

[Shramir]

ive seen all the humming birds near my house (there are a lot) doing this recently. at first i thought they were swooping as a threat display then i thought its probably a mating thing cause its springtime!

interesting to know that the loud chirp is from the tail and not the voice