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“Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones nine times removed from ours, their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests.”

— From “Joyas Voladoras” in One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder, by Brian Doyle

Location: Silverton, Oregon

Exposure: 1/400 second, f/6.3, ISO 4000

Focal Length: 600 mm

Gear:

• Camera: Nikon D750

• Lens: Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary