Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners
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Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners

The vision by Jan van der Greef, The Netherlands
Winner 2018, Black and White

Perfectly balanced, its wings vibrating, its tail opening and closing, with its tiny feet touching the spike for just an instant, an eastern mountaineer hummingbird siphons nectar from the florets of a red-hot-poker plant.

Positioned by the flower, Jan had anticipated the bird’s behaviour. For a number of days he had been stationed in the garden of his hotel in southern Peru, observing hummingbirds. He noticed that an eastern mountaineer – a species found only in Peru, characterized by its long, black-and-white forked tail – would rotate around the red-hot-poker spikes as it fed.

He also saw that, when the bird moved behind a spike and its tail closed for a moment, a beautiful cross appeared. Determining to capture this strange vision, he staked out a spot underneath a single red-hot-poker plant (native to Africa, where it is pollinated by nectar‑drinkers such as sunbirds). It proved to be the hummingbird’s preferred garden source of energy-rich nectar.

The low position of his wheelchair allowed him to set the spike against the sky, framing it with a dark surround of bushes. It took two half days to get the perfect shot, setting his camera to capture 14 frames a second, as the cross appeared for just a fraction of a second before its creator, with a burst of power, went on to the next flower on its route.

Canon EOS-1D X Mark II + 500mm f4 lens; 1.4x III extender; 1/5000 sec at f5.6; ISO 4000; Gitzo tripod + Jobu gimbal head.