About ten years ago, Robert Tyrrell heard there was an Anna’s hummingbird nesting at the San Diego Zoo. He had been trying to get a good photograph of a hummingbird for almost two years, and he’d just been given some new equipment, an old-fashioned strobe with an extra-short flash. He’d had plenty of opportunities to shoot the birds at feeders, but this was his first nesting bird, and it was only a two-hour drive from his house.
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When an editor at National Geographic saw them, she was impressed. She followed up, and in February 1982 the magazine published seven photographs of hummingbirds by Tyrrell. Tyrrell, a former advertising photographer, says that that magazine issue was a turning point–the end of his career in the studio and the start of his career as a hummingbird man. “[National Geographic] had been receiving photos of hummingbirds for 25 years,” says Tyrrell’s wife, Esther. “These were the first they had published.”
Hummingbirds have always posed a problem for photographers. Their wings beat 80 times a second. Sometimes they hover, but they can also fly forward, backward, up, and down. Their iridescent colors show only when light hits the wings just right; because of the flat, mirrorlike plates in their wings, light coming from most directions simply doesnt reveal the birds’ colors.
While Tyrrell was trying to capture the birds on film, Esther started reading up on them. “People would see us taking photos and ask all these questions,” she says. She couldn’t answer most of them, so she did some research and found that what information there was on hummingbirds was not very accessible: most was in rare books or jargon-filled science journals. The Tyrrells approached Crown Publishers and got a book contract. For a year Esther, who kept her fulltime job as an X-ray technician, spent every night and weekend at the library. Tyrrell did his part with the camera.
The Tyrrells will give a slide show and lecture this Sunday, March 12, at 1:30 PM at the Field Museum, Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive. Tickets are $6, $4 for members; call 322-8854 to reserve a spot. Hummingbirds: Their Life and Behavior sells for $35 at the Field Museum store.
