Malachite Kingfishers fish from low perches in reeds and grasses very close to the water. It helps if you are photographing from a shallow bottomed boat that keeps you as low low to the water as the birds. We spent the afternoon quietly drifting along a marshy section of the Zambezi River in the Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia specifically looking for these beautiful birds. Besides diving for very small fish every so often, the kingfisher in the image periodically raised his wings in a territorial display used to make his presence known to potential mates and interlopers. We stayed with this little guy until well after sunset, when I took the image.
I used a Canon EOS 7D Mark II with a Canon 200 - 400mm f/4L IS USM EXT. The exposure settings were 1/1000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 4000, 526 mm, handheld.