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 specifically looking for these beautiful birds. We stayed with this little guy until well after sunset, when I took this picture. The intersecting lines from the reeds and grass tend to bring your eye right back to the brilliantly colored little bird.
I took the image with a Canon EOS 7D Mark II with a Canon 200 - 400mm f/4L IS USM EXT lens. The exposure settings were 1/1000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 4000, 526 mm, handheld.
