You looking at me?

I have literally taken tens of thousands of photographs of hummingbirds over the years and this is the first time I have ever gotten a pose quite like this.  I was shooting 20 frames per second which is the only way I caught this - I never even saw her looking over her shoulder for that brief moment.  So many hummingbirds in the garden this year, which makes up for the lack of monarchs (so far).  I have four feeders out now and am going through about 4 cups of nectar a day, plus all the flowers in my garden that produce pollen and nectar.

I rented a Laowa 90mm lens to try out, which arrived this morning.  I quickly put it on the z8 and almost as quickly realized that I am terrible with manual focus.  And this little piece of glass is fully manual, so...  I shot a bunch of images in the garden and had 2 keepers.  I have about 10 days to work with it and see if my ability to manual focus gets better.

I also spotted a very tiny wasp in the dill and was able to get some workable shots of it with the d850 and macro lens.  It's a new species for me, Genus Gasteruption.  I'm putting a shot in Extra - worth having a look and keep in mind that the whole thing was less than an inch long including the dangly bits.  

It's brutally hot and humid again today with more of the same tomorrow.  Jax and I did not last long on the deck this morning - it was just too hot.  I'm making sure to change out the water for the birds during the day as they also suffer in this heat.  We had a drenching thunderstorm last night which gave the garden a good watering so I don't need to do that today.  

Hubs and I shared a dark chocolate croissant today. It was decadent and delicious.

xo
Debbi