The angriest hummingbird in the world

Brilliant Fury, originally uploaded by Acreepingmalaise.

Another random Flickr find.

Readers Hal and Linda Weinberg, Mayor and First Lady of Anmore, B.C. will appreciate this one. The hummingbird is the official bird of Anmore.

This hummingbird is clearly the angriest vertebrate in the world. David Lynch eat your heart out.

Comments

[squashed]

Wow, that guy must have stalked the little bird for days and days to get that image. perfect.

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[John]

Is that bird carrying an avian-sized lance? If so, when the hell did they get opposable thumbs? Shit, when did they get hands? Great, just one MORE thing to be scared of. I've got to start watching the Learning Channel.

[Linda Weinberg]

Hey Lindsay, Thanks for the mention. Our beautiful Anmore hummingbird as designed by your mom is beautiful, hovering and probably not angry. Hugs from our perch on the side of a granite batholith. Linda

[Julian Elson]

I am reminded of Ursula Vernon's reminiscences of Arizona, in which she includes a discussion of hummingbirds, about how "A hummingbird, in its own mind, is ten stories tall with grendade launchers and gunports. A hummingbird knows, down in the hollow toothpicks of its bones, that it can kick your ass."

[John Emerson]

I've been told that among the Aztecs the hummingbird was a warrior symbol, because of its quickness and elusiveness.

I've been attacked by a mole who must have weighed about an ounce.

[rob helpy-chalk]

John Emerson: you must have had it coming.

[j swift]

I was looking out the back door of my parents house some years ago, watching it rain when a male roufus landed on the telephone line coming into the house. He was wet and look more pissed than this one...well maybe he was more disgruntled. lol

Excellent shot though

[John Emerson]

They have scary teeth and claws. Perhaps 1/10 the weight of their body.

Yes, I did drown him out of his hole. Then I took him to a non-lawn area and released him. Good thing it was me -- the other guy on that job fed moles to his weasel.

[Gray Lensman]

We spend the summer (in CO mountains) watching the roufus males attacking the blackthroats and broadtails at the feeders even if he is not hungry. We call him the Republican hummer. The other hummers usually leave the others alone. When there are no roufuses (roufi?) around, there will sometimes be five or six feeding at the same time on the same feeder.

One solution (pun) is to mix the juice weaker on one feeder. The roufus will guard the regular strength one 'cause it's sweeter. Works sometimes.

[Earl]

That, uh, looks Photoshopped. I love it, but...

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Like you say, Earl, it's a great image, Photoshopped or not. What makes you think it's been altered? I'm terrible at spotting the telltale signs.

[rob helpy-chalk]

I thought it was photoshopped to. It's the vibrant and contrasty colors that make it look fake. I think, though, that you can get that effect by passing filters over the whole picture at once, so that, at least by scientific standards, it is not a doctored photo. It could go in journals along side computer composite images of distant nebulae.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I don't tend to think of contrast and color adjustments as Photoshopping. To me, those kinds of tweaks fall under digital darkroom processing. Those are the kinds of effects that traditional photographers can achieve by selecting the right film, using filters, and applying specialized developing techniques. I'm not trying to be normative or anything, but to me "Photoshopped" connotes more extreme image alterations.

[squashed]

The image has been touched up.

easiest way to spot ..

1. shadow. natural looking shadow, the detail of it, is hard to fake.

2. edges. the one above, if you see under the bird's chin has been touched up/sharpened. Compare that to the top of bird's head for eg. If you enlarge the image in that area, you can see the pixels just don't have natural color compared to other edges.

3. usually a fake picture tries to hide "context" so a viewer can't compare it to other object in the picture. (eg. super close up, weird color background, eerie /bland overall, noise, muddy, not lustrous, weird color transition ...)

The best way to find out is to do it yourself. play around with photoshop and try to make altered pics and then see why it looks unnatural.

[John Emerson]

So the angry-hummingbird story turns out to be another liberal Killian memo.

[squashed]

well, somebody with more expertise maybe can tell what is the size of chunk being removed from that picture. I mean it could be he is just removing the bait that makes the bird fly that way... I am no expert.

The entire pose looks real to me, I just can't see the context. (eg. why is the bird posing that way, what other object was around the bird)

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I'm not sure that that the color levels were enhanced on the bird. They could have been, but I've seen some pretty flashy hummingbirds in real life. He actually looks pretty natural. I think the shallow depth of field does more to create contrast than anything else. The little guy really stands out against the blurred green background.

Here's another picture of http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=81187984&size=m&context=pool-81686099@N00>a hummingbird in a similar pose. Here's another more colorful one doing http://www.flickr.com/photos/khosla/69891946/in/pool-hummingbirds/>something similar.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

You guys are right--the image is tagged http://www.flickr.com/photos/eddy/tags/photoshopcleanup/>photoshop cleanup.

[Craig Shergold]

It's not that they think they can stomp you, they know that they're faster than you and can do whatever they want. "I'm not touching you. Am I bugging you?"

Their mating dance is fun. They do a slinky sinuous sideways shimmy.

There are hummers with beaks longer than their bodies, evolved for trumpet flower. There are huge ones 13,000 feet in the Andes. Hummers are awesom.

And the humming is amazing when they get up close and you're a flower and hover. It's a deep industrial thrumming.

[Trystero]

Here's the original.

[Gwyn]

Using Photoshop to "clean up" an image isn't at all unusual. This pose surely is, though, I only WISH I had one like this to photoshop!

[rob helpy-chalk]

It's funny that the most striking change he made was to center the bird and straighten the perch. It really makes the photo more compelling, yet it seems like a small change.

[Acreepingmalaise]

:)
I am glad that you are all enjoying my hummer.
the photo has been retouched in this version. the original is also available in my flickr photo stream.

The pose is quite real.
I did fix the perch and background.
there wasn't anything else of note in the photo that I was hiding, (like a feeder). I just wasnt happy with the perch/background and color of the photo.

As for the pose, I think it may have been gas.

Eddy

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Hi, Eddy. Thanks for stopping by and giving us the straight dope. Keep up the great work.