Tell us the story behind the image Recently I was on expedition with the Okavango Wilderness Project (Instagram: @intotheokavango) in South Eastern Angola. A very remote and pristine area, untouched and unspoiled by civilization. The region is also known as the Water Tower of Southern Africa. It is an area roughly the size of a decently large country from where the sources and major tributaries of large hydrographic basins like the Okavango, Zambezi, Congo, Kwanza, and Cunene, originate and spread in all directions. We setup camp deep in the Miombo woodlands on the shore of lake Kembo — an early tributary and the first major water body of the Cuando river system (below I’ve added the coordinates and a link to Google Maps). While scouting the forest with Schnapps (a Bayei mokoro poler and excellent field guide from Botswana) he spotted the kingfisher flying away from what appeared to be a hole in a tree’s trunk. We stood there silently for a while and within 20 minutes the bird was back with an insect in it’s beak, slowly and cautiously approaching the hole by flying from branch to branch. Obviously that was a nest with hungry little chicks inside. The next morning I returned to that spot geared with my camouflage net, a tripod and my Nikon setup consisting of a D810 camera body fitted with a prime-tele Nikkor 400mm f/2.8 lens. I stood steady and silent for about 3hrs taking a series of photos every 20-30 minutes when the kingfisher was returning with food for the chicks and this is one of the rewarding photos from that day. (coordinates: https://www.google.co.ao/maps/@-13.1377472,19.0483143,1640m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en What were the technical challenges? As I couldn’t move much under the camouflage net in order not to disturb the birds and also not to blow my disguise, I had to rely almost entirely on my hearing to sense when the parent kingfisher was returning. Fortunately for me, the cautious parents had a well established and predictable habit and a pattern of landing on other branches nearby before approaching the nest. As the environment was silent, I could hear the wing flapping and for me that was a signal to prefocus on the hole, and get steady with my finger on the shutter release ready to shoot in high frame rate mode any moment. The difficult part was to predict and nail the focus on the bird in the air as it’s path was some times from the sides and other times straight on. But after a few attempts, I got the focus plane right. Patience and persistence is rewarding most of the times, indeed. The other big challenges were the unbearable heat, humidity and most of all, the bees, who are always thirsty for water and especially salt and other minerals in our sweat. Só they were constantly crawling in big numbers on all exposed parts of the skin. Even under the camo net. Very disturbing.