DECEMBER 2011 – An African Spoonbill (Platalea alba) walks along the shore of the Cuando river at the Chobe National Park in Botswana. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com
The story behind the image
We concluded our 2011 trip to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botsuana with a four-night stay at the excellent Chobe Safari Lodge. The lodge is located next to the Cuando river and the Chobe National Park, so you get the opportunity to do guided boat excursions as well as traditional, landbound safaris in sturdy 4x4s.
During our landbound safari we saw countless exciting animals (including one female lion that passed our car just a few meters in front of us). Here’s a smaller, equally interesting animal: an African Spoonbill that walked along the shore of the Cuando river. Its distinctive feature is the spoon-shaped bill that enables catching small fish and insects, molluscs, amphibians and crustaceans using a sweeping motion through the shallow river water. It has perfectly adapted to the river environment, thanks to long legs and thin, pointed toes.
My 100-400 mm zoom lens was welcome here, as it behaved on the 1D Mark III like a 130-520 mm zoom (compared to a full frame body.) This time I used the 320 mm focal length (416 mm on a full frame.)
Very nice.
The high resolution image
| Capture Date & Time | 09-DEC-2011, 08:55 |
| Location | Chobe National Park, Botsuana |
| Camera | Canon EOS-1D Mark III |
| Lens | Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM |
| ISO | 640 |
| Exposure | 1/3200 sec at f/5.6 |
| Digital Image Source Format | Canon Camera RAW (CR2) |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 2592 x 3888 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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