Backyard broad-tailed hummingbird bonanza
My favorite photos from a month spent photographing broad-tailed hummingbirds in my backyard.
Last summer, I was living in an apartment and decided to plant a small container garden of native plants on my balcony. The only plant that survived and came back this year was my anise hyssop. (Since it’s in the mint family, it also spread into the other two containers. I can’t wait to see how much of the yard is covered in anise hyssop next year.)
Broad-tailed hummingbirds would reliably visit my anise hyssop on the balcony when it was blooming in late summer last year. I had hoped that it would attract them again in my new backyard this year.
Boy, did it ever!
It seems likely that a pair of broad-tailed hummingbirds bred in or near my yard this year because there were constantly at least one adult male, one adult female, and one or two immature birds present throughout late summer. And even though my neighbors have hummingbird feeders, the anise hyssop blossoms were their favorite food source throughout August!
(I strongly prefer natural food sources over feeders and I felt vindicated in this one particular case. 😅)
Since the flowers were in pots, I moved them to a spot on my deck where they would photograph the best. My tripod basically lived on the deck all month and I was out there whenever I could, hoping for photos. The hummingbirds did not disappoint!
Here are some of my favorite photos of broad-tailed hummingbirds feeding on anise hyssop this summer.
My all-time favorite
This one is bound to go down as one of my favorite photos of 2026. We get a lot of isolated storms where the sun is still shining so I had hoped we might get a rainbow in just the right spot. As it was getting quite late in the season, we finally did!!! The rainbow was extremely vibrant, but somehow incredibly challenging to actually photograph. I’m so happy with the outcome.
Macro lens photos
Fellow photographer James Tornetta inspired me to try photographing these hummingbirds with a macro lens. After several days spending time with them on the deck, I discovered he was correct that they wouldn’t mind at all if I was close to them as long as they were getting nectar. I was able to sit just a couple feet away from the plant and take these photos with an older EF 100mm macro lens I have; not cropped at all.
Other favorites
Just my good ol’ RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1L on a tripod for these!
Videos
With such cooperative birds, this was a great chance to practice taking some (slow motion) video, too! I was especially thrilled with this first one of an adult male broad-tailed hummingbird feeding on my anise hyssop at golden hour in the early morning.