Cape Town — Kingfishers Diving at Intaka
One of my most rewarding recent discoveries for Cape Town bird photography has been Intaka Island — a unique 16-hectare wetland and wildlife sanctuary located at the centre of Century City, one of Cape Town’s most ambitious modern developments. For Brits, imagine London’s Barbican at five times the scale in a semi-tropical environment, complete with fancy apartments, canals, office blocks, and some excellent cafes, with a 40-acre protected wildlife reserve tucked improbably at its heart.
Intaka is home to 177 species of indigenous fynbos plants and 120 bird species. There are two main ponds: the larger one hosts a substantial Cormorant and Sacred Ibis population, which I had photographed before. On previous visits the smaller pond seemed unremarkable. It turned out to be anything but, because it is home to Malachite Kingfishers.
Intaka normally opens at 7:00 am, but on a recent visit I discovered you can buy a key to the gates and enter at any time. As a result, I arrived at 6:00 am on three successive days to try to catch the Kingfisher diving. Trying to photograph a Kingfisher is difficult. Trying to catch it in flight is extremely difficult — you can wait up to two hours for one to appear, and then it may only be present for two or three minutes. They are also lightning fast.
I eventually got several sequences at 50 frames per second of the Malachite diving from its perch into the water. From perch to water took 14 frames — 0.3 of a second for the full flight. It was back on the perch just as fast. My reaction time is around 0.3–0.5 seconds, which makes capturing this physically impossible without help. That help is the OM System Pro Capture feature, which buffers up to 4 seconds of images without saving anything; when you fully press the shutter, the whole sequence is written to card. I used 50fps with a buffer of around 35 images to capture the full dive sequence, including the money shots of the Kingfisher entering the water and then repeatedly striking its catch — a freshwater prawn — against the perch.
All shots were taken with the OM-1 Mark II and the 50–200mm f/2.8 lens (100–400mm FFE) — the “Little White” — with either the 1.4x or 2.0x teleconverters. I had never photographed a Kingfisher in earnest before; these are the best images I have ever achieved of the species.
Photographs in this album include: Malachite Kingfisher in flight, Malachite Kingfisher diving sequence, Malachite Kingfisher with freshwater prawn catch, Pied Kingfisher in flight, and more.
View the full album at mcaughtry.photo/albums/cape-town-kingfishers-diving. Touch or click any image to open a lightbox view; tap the full-screen icon for the best experience. Click the “i” icon beneath any thumbnail for full EXIF data and location information for that image.