The exquisite sunbittern in flight

This image is part of the series of bird-in-flight shots in which I replace an original out of focus background typical of long lenses with a sharp landscape. This creates complete depth of field in a scenario that would otherwise be impossible to show this kind of clarity and detail. In this particular case, I composited five images -- the clouds, the landscape, the perch, and two different photographs of the beautiful sunbittern as it flew in response to the approach of my boat in the Pantanal region of Brazil. My settings for the bird were 1/2000, f/5.6, and 1250 ISO. I used a slower shutter than I normally do for birds in flight because these birds are slow flyers with fairly large wings. When sunbitterns are wading in shallow water, they are not that impressive at all. When they take flight, though, the colors and patterns of the wings show beautifully. A lot of birds are colorful, but not many have such an intricate and complex pattern.