I got an unexpected gift on Thursday. I decided to go down to the other end of San Diego, to the Tijuana River Estuary, right along the US border, to see what I could see. The San Diego Birding Festival does field trips there every year, and the names of the places there: Dairy Mart Pond, Border Field Park, The Bird and Butterfly Garden, Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge and the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve come up in in any good description of the top birding places in San Diego County. And yet, in my 10 years of visiting San Diego for the Birding Festival, I had never been in the Tijuana Valley. Past time to do something about that. And besides, it seemed like the fresh water Dairy Mart Pond might be my best bet for early dragonflies.

No dragonfiles, but I did find a lot of songbirds and raptors in the valley, some of which you will see here in due time. And then there were hummingbirds. Lots of hummingbirds almost everywhere I went in the valley. Mostly Anna’s in various stages of maturity. So the Tijuana River Valley itself was a gift, and I will certainly spend a morning there on future trips to San Diego…but of course it is this hummingbird shot that is the real gift! I believe it is a female Anna’s, by the chunky build and the location, but also by the sound it made in flight. Anna’s have a sharp, cracking energy to their flight that actually produces a unique sound that you can hear at close range. I was at the back end of the Bird and Butterfly Garden near the “Trail Staging Area” on the Tijuana River Open Space Preserve. This bird was in the red flowering bush for only 90 seconds total, visiting maybe a dozen flowers. I made several attempts to catch her at the flower. Most were empty frames…but this one! This one is the gift. This one made me smile out loud when I pulled it up on the LCD after the bird had flown off. When I got it up on the computer monitor that afternoon it gave me a little shiver.

It is not perfect. I would really like one like this with the gorget flashing in the sun, and the bird could be a touch higher in the fame. And, of course, there are lots of hummingbird shots like this one…and better than this one…with the bird at a flower. It is just that I have never taken one! Considering the difficulty of the shot, it still a wonderful gift!

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200 optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter). f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.