Juan van den Heever's Image

Two southern carmine bee-eaters fly repeatedly at each other, using their long bills to ‘joust like fencers with swords,’ says Juan.

He challenged himself to capture a close-up of this action before the end of his trip, but ‘the speed and sheer number of birds was verwhelming,’ he says. With determination and a fast shutter speed, he managed it. Every August, thousands of these strikingly colourful birds form huge breeding colonies on the banks of the Zambezi. Males fight for the best nesting spots on the steepest, highest parts of the banks. Twisting and turning in long aerial pursuits, their mid-air tussles sometimes send rivals tumbling to the ground.