© Examiner Publications (Cork) Ltd
Gotcha! This is the world's smallest bird. It's a bee hummingbird and I photographed it on a college photographic tour of Cuba. It visited the flowering shrub in the garden of our Airbnb house and it was always too shady in the morning and evening for me to capture it. This was on the final day, around lunchtime when the sun had begun to wash over the garden. It took me a fair while to get this shot. I had to change lens, change to a continuous focus and out of the loads and loads of photographs I only got two with the bird perfectly frozen. The other one is the hummingbird feeding with its wings covering its head - it looks like an angel! This is not a zoo or bird sanctuary shot, it was taken from a first floor terrace overlooking the bush. I can still feel my tension as I tried to following this tiny and exceptionally fast bird to get a shot. I hope you like it. I'm studying photography at Limerick College of Further Education and the Photographic Department organised a cultural photographic tour to Cuba in February, an amazing opportunity and one for which I'm so grateful.