Meet the Woman on a Mission to Photograph Every Species of Hummingbird in the World

Seven years ago, anesthesiologist and budding photographer Carole Turek embarked on a seemingly impossible quest to photograph every hummingbird species in the world—all 366 of them. Now 75 years old and entering retirement, Turek has just 90 species left on her list. And what began as a personal obsession has garnered the attention and praise of researchers, conservationists, and legions of fans through her popular YouTube channel and website, Hummingbird Spot.

Turek developed an early affection for birds as a child, sparked by the chatter of pet parakeets that filled her family’s home in the Philadelphia suburbs. But it wasn’t until she was in her 30s, after completing an anesthesiology residency and moving to Colorado, that wild birds grabbed her attention. One afternoon, while Turek dined on a restaurant patio, a flash of iridescence caught her eye. Sipping from the blossoms of a hanging flower basket was Turek’s first hummingbird—possibly a Broad-tailed, but she lacked the expertise to identify it then. She watched, spellbound, until the bird zipped out of sight. “I was fascinated with it,” she says.

After that initial encounter, Turek was hooked. When she moved to Los Angeles in 1987, she was delighted to find hummingbirds visiting the plants on her property and decided to hang a feeder of her own. Anna’s and Allen’s Hummingbirds were two of the most frequent diners, shining brilliant shades of green, pink, and orange. As more hummers arrived, she put out more food. “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 really got out of hand when she eventually settled into her home in Studio City. There, her flowers and 16 feeders overlooked Laurel Canyon from a third-floor balcony, offering an irresistible buffet for every passing hummer. Depending on the season, she went through 50 to 90 pounds of sugar per week to keep the feeders brimming with homemade nectar, serving hundreds of hungry birds daily.

Inspired by Cornell Lab of Ornithology bird cams and the social media accounts of wildlife photographers, Turek decided to share her spirited guests with the world. Shortly thereafter, Hummingbird Spot was born. She launched the YouTube channel in 2016 to livestream her Studio City feeders and purchased a professional camera, despite having no formal photography background. Each day, she practiced photographing the hummers on her balcony, learning to capture crisp visuals despite their constant movement. 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 thousands of photos of her regular visitors, Turek craved a new challenge. A trip to Arizona added a few species to her growing portfolio, but with only 15 types of hummingbirds regularly found in the United States, she soon realized she’d have to head further south to Central and South America to capture the family’s full spectrum of beauty and behavior.

A Partnership Takes Flight

In the summer of 2018, Turek made her first-ever international trip to Honduras, where a tour company called Beaks and Peaks advertised adventures for hummingbird photographers. On the 10-day trip, she was thrilled to encounter a bounty of new hummers: a shimmering Honduran Emerald flitting through forest scrub, a dusky Azure-crowned Hummingbird cloaked in subtle iridescence, and a Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird with a gleaming sapphire throat, among others. But the most important introduction was to William Orellana, the photographer who guided her through the country.

A conversation about the Marvelous Spatuletail, the subject of a David Attenborough-narrated video that Turek had watched “a hundred times over,” changed everything. Turek wanted to see the tiny bird with two especially lengthy tail feathers ending in disc-like “rackets,” and Orellana knew of a guide in Peru who could help. But Turek, then in her late 60s, was hesitant to travel by herself with people that she didn’t know. She felt safe and comfortable with Orellana—so much so that she asked him to accompany her. He readily agreed and became her regular travel companion, and is now a Hummingbird Spot employee as well as the owner of Beaks and Peaks. “I felt like I was training all my life to receive that request from her,” Orellana says.

To find the Marvelous Spatuletail, Turek and Orellana hiked through Peru’s Huembo Reserve, stopping in front of five nectar feeders known to attract the species. They were prepared to return the next day, and the day after that, if the bird didn’t show. But it appeared after only three minutes, a blaze of white, green, 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 website ever since. Her photos and videos introduce new audiences, particularly those in the United States, to the diverse world of hummingbirds. So far, she has tracked down 276 species, including rare and elusive hummers that have required her and Orellana to trek through remote tropical jungles and climb cloud-veiled mountains.

Long Roads to Rare Finds

Some of Turek’s most impressive observations have come from Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, where hummingbirds and other wildlife are losing habitat to agricultural expansion, logging, and mining. She and Orellana traversed the mountains in 2020 to find the rare, critically endangered Blue-bearded Helmetcrest that can only be found at elevations above 10,000 feet. The team endured frigid nights and a punishing ascent, but Turek’s enthusiasm defied exhaustion. At the summit, they were rewarded by a male helmetcrest that lingered for hours—a sight witnessed by maybe 100 people alive today 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 range in 2024 to find and film the Santa Marta Sabrewing, a dazzling hummingbird once feared extinct. Prior to its rediscovery in 2022, the sabrewing was listed as one of the top 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 global birding community to seek out birds with no documented sightings for at least a decade. With the help of ABC’s local partners, Turek captured some of the first high-quality video footage of the species and used her online platform to spotlight local conservation and research 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, executive director of the International Hummingbird Society, of which Turek serves on the board of directors. “These hummingbirds are all over the Americas, and they need help.”

While photographing the Santa Marta Sabrewing, Turek learned of another species on the lost birds list—one awaiting rediscovery. John Mittermeier, director of the Search for Lost Birds at ABC, and Dan Lebbin, ABC’s Vice President of Threatened Species, were part of the team that joined Turek in Colombia. Upon discovering her ambitious quest to photograph every hummingbird species, they told her about the Vilcabamba Inca, a bird lost to science for almost six decades.

Turek was up for the challenge. In August 2024, flanked by dense vegetation and murky mist in the Vilcabamba Mountains of south-central Peru, she and Orellana captured the first-ever photographs and video of the Vilcabamba Inca. Their encounter with the large, straight-billed hummingbird was fleeting—but it was enough to confirm the bird’s status as rediscovered.

After retiring last December, Turek returned to her childhood home in Pennsylvania. She had to take down her Studio City feeders, but Hummingbird Spot’s bird cam offerings have expanded, streaming other feeders in California, Peru, and Ecuador. Turek is hard at work attracting Ruby-throated Hummingbirds—the only U.S. species that breeds east of the Mississippi—to the suburbs, and her mission to photograph every hummingbird species has become a full-time project. Turek has no target end date, but with upcoming trips planned to Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Peru, she expects to reach 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.”