12
Votes
Corné van Oosterhout's picture

Kingfisher courtship

Male kingfisher presenting a fish to his new girlfriend.

Nikon Z7
200mm/2.0 with 2x ex · f/4.0 · 1/250 · ISO 800
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4 Comments

Spectacular and perfect! Any time you can get a male and a female of the same species facing each other, and on the same plane of focus, you have something really special. This is a splendid behavioral image. I am wondering if you have any files from this shoot that show these two facing each other, but without the fish? Just thinking that as a behavioral image this rocks, but as a fine art image the fish may not be the best thing to include.

Hi Tom, thanks for the compliments! :-) It takes some times/shots sometimes to get both sharp in focus, but the reward is great. I always work very close to the birds, so dof is very shallow. I don't have these two without a fish, it is a strange relationship, as the female is only born this year, so not really grown enough to be a 'women'. After a few weeks where the male was rejecting here, I finally saw this courtship behaviour. In the end she didn't take the fish, but flew away, the male ate the fish himself :-) I checked my sales, but I also sell couples with fish, not as much as couples without though :-)
Kind regards, Corné

Excellent work Corné

Thank you Marius! :-)