Meet the Girl on a Mission to {Photograph} Each Species of Hummingbird within the World

Seven years in the past, anesthesiologist and budding photographer Carole Turek launched into a seemingly unimaginable quest to {photograph} each hummingbird species on the planet—all 366 of them. Now 75 years outdated and getting into retirement, Turek has simply 90 species left on her checklist. And what started as a private obsession has garnered the eye and reward of researchers, conservationists, and legions of followers by her fashionable YouTube channel and website, Hummingbird Spot.

Turek developed an early affection for birds as a baby, sparked by the chatter of pet parakeets that crammed her household’s house within the Philadelphia suburbs. But it wasn’t till she was in her 30s, after finishing an anesthesiology residency and transferring to Colorado, that wild birds grabbed her consideration. One afternoon, whereas Turek dined on a restaurant patio, a flash of iridescence caught her eye. Sipping from the blossoms of a dangling flower basket was Turek’s first hummingbird—probably a Broad-tailed, however she lacked the experience to determine it then. She watched, spellbound, till the fowl zipped out of sight. “I was fascinated with it,” she says.

After that preliminary encounter, Turek was hooked. When she moved to Los Angeles in 1987, she was delighted to seek out hummingbirds visiting the crops on her property and determined to hold a feeder of her personal. Anna’s and Allen’s Hummingbirds had been two of probably the most frequent diners, shining good shades of inexperienced, pink, and orange. As extra hummers arrived, she put out extra meals. “I hung another feeder, and that turned into four, then six, until I had hummingbird feeders all over the house,” she says. “I would sit by the window and wait for them to come.”

Things actually acquired out of hand when she ultimately settled into her house in Studio City. There, her flowers and 16 feeders missed Laurel Canyon from a third-floor balcony, providing an irresistible buffet for each passing hummer. Depending on the season, she went by 50 to 90 kilos of sugar per week to maintain the feeders brimming with selfmade nectar, serving a whole lot of hungry birds day by day.

Inspired by Cornell Lab of Ornithology fowl cams and the social media accounts of wildlife photographers, Turek determined to share her spirited company with the world. Shortly thereafter, Hummingbird Spot was born. She launched the YouTube channel in 2016 to livestream her Studio City feeders and bought an expert digicam, regardless of having no formal pictures background. Each day, she practiced photographing the hummers on her balcony, studying to seize crisp visuals regardless of their fixed motion. At first, “I only took pictures on the automatic setting,” she says. “I didn’t know anything about ISO or aperture. I grew up in the era of little box cameras that you bought at 7-Eleven.” 

After snapping tens of 1000’s of pictures of her common guests, Turek craved a brand new problem. A visit to Arizona added a number of species to her rising portfolio, however with solely 15 kinds of hummingbirds recurrently discovered within the United States, she quickly realized she’d have to move additional south to Central and South America to seize the household’s full spectrum of magnificence and conduct.

A Partnership Takes Flight

In the summer season of 2018, Turek made her first-ever worldwide journey to Honduras, the place a tour firm referred to as Beaks and Peaks marketed adventures for hummingbird photographers. On the 10-day journey, she was thrilled to come across a bounty of latest hummers: a shimmering Honduran Emerald flitting by forest scrub, a dusky Azure-crowned Hummingbird cloaked in delicate iridescence, and a Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird with a gleaming sapphire throat, amongst others. But an important introduction was to William Orellana, the photographer who guided her by the nation.

A dialog concerning the Marvelous Spatuletail, the topic of a David Attenborough-narrated video that Turek had watched “a hundred times over,” modified the whole lot. Turek wished to see the tiny fowl with two particularly prolonged tail feathers ending in disc-like “rackets,” and Orellana knew of a information in Peru who may assist. But Turek, then in her late 60s, was hesitant to journey by herself with folks that she didn’t know. She felt protected and comfy with Orellana—a lot in order that she requested him to accompany her. He readily agreed and have become her common journey companion, and is now a Hummingbird Spot worker in addition to the proprietor of Beaks and Peaks. “I felt like I was training all my life to receive that request from her,” Orellana says.

To discover the Marvelous Spatuletail, Turek and Orellana hiked by Peru’s Huembo Reserve, stopping in entrance of 5 nectar feeders recognized to draw the species. They had been ready to return the subsequent day, and the day after that, if the fowl didn’t present. But it appeared after solely three minutes, a blaze of white, inexperienced, blue, and bronze. “All I could hear was David Attenborough’s voice in my head. I started crying,” Turek says. “Somewhere on that trip, it clicked: This is what I want to do. I want to photograph all of them.”

Turek, who wears wide-frame glasses and an ever-present, infectious smile, has been documenting her adventures on the Hummingbird Spot channel and web site ever since. Her pictures and movies introduce new audiences, notably these within the United States, to the varied world of hummingbirds. So far, she has tracked down 276 species, together with uncommon and elusive hummers which have required her and Orellana to trek by distant tropical jungles and climb cloud-veiled mountains.

Long Roads to Rare Finds

Some of Turek’s most spectacular observations have come from Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, the place hummingbirds and different wildlife are shedding habitat to agricultural enlargement, logging, and mining. She and Orellana traversed the mountains in 2020 to seek out the uncommon, critically endangered Blue-bearded Helmetcrest that may solely be discovered at elevations above 10,000 ft. The crew endured frigid nights and a punishing ascent, however Turek’s enthusiasm defied exhaustion. At the summit, they had been rewarded by a male helmetcrest that lingered for hours—a sight witnessed by perhaps 100 individuals alive right now and photographed by even fewer. “Sometimes it takes a lot of work and research to find the hummingbirds, but it’s so gratifying when we do,” Orellana says.

Turek returned to the mountain vary in 2024 to seek out and movie the Santa Marta Sabrewing, a stunning hummingbird as soon as feared extinct. Prior to its rediscovery in 2022, the sabrewing was listed as one of many high 10 most-wanted species by the Search for Lost Birds, a collaboration between American Bird Conservancy (ABC), Re:wild, and BirdLife International that calls on the worldwide birding neighborhood to hunt out birds with no documented sightings for at the very least a decade. With the assistance of ABC’s native companions, Turek captured a number of the first high-quality video footage of the species and used her on-line platform to highlight native conservation and analysis efforts.

“She’s raising awareness of the fact that there are all kinds of hummingbirds out there, and that a lot of them face significant challenges,” says Alice Madar, government director of the International Hummingbird Society, of which Turek serves on the board of administrators. “These hummingbirds are all over the Americas, and they need help.”

While photographing the Santa Marta Sabrewing, Turek realized of one other species on the misplaced birds checklist—one awaiting rediscovery. John Mittermeier, director of the Search for Lost Birds at ABC, and Dan Lebbin, ABC’s Vice President of Threatened Species, had been a part of the crew that joined Turek in Colombia. Upon discovering her bold quest to {photograph} each hummingbird species, they advised her concerning the Vilcabamba Inca, a fowl misplaced to science for nearly six many years.

Turek was up for the problem. In August 2024, flanked by dense vegetation and murky mist within the Vilcabamba Mountains of south-central Peru, she and Orellana captured the first-ever images and video of the Vilcabamba Inca. Their encounter with the big, straight-billed hummingbird was fleeting—however it was sufficient to substantiate the fowl’s standing as rediscovered.

After retiring final December, Turek returned to her childhood house in Pennsylvania. She needed to take down her Studio City feeders, however Hummingbird Spot’s fowl cam choices have expanded, streaming different feeders in California, Peru, and Ecuador. Turek is difficult at work attracting Ruby-throated Hummingbirds—the one U.S. species that breeds east of the Mississippi—to the suburbs, and her mission to {photograph} each hummingbird species has grow to be a full-time challenge. Turek has no goal finish date, however with upcoming journeys deliberate to Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Peru, she expects to achieve 300 species in 2026.

“This is what keeps me young. It keeps me alive, and it keeps me in shape,” Turek says. “I hope that I’m inspiring some older people to get up off the couch and chase their dreams.”