Symbiosis

This is a yellow-billed oxpecker on a zebra in Kenya.  Large African mammals can carry as many as hundreds to 25,000 ticks on their bodies depending on the season, the region and the species. A single yellow-billed oxpecker can eat as many as 13,000 tick larva in a single day or 100 engorged female ticks in the same period.  Ticks are parasites that are responsible for many kinds of diseases affecting both animals and people, so these birds are really appreciated by everyone.  I took this tight composition with a 500mm f/4 Canon telephoto plus a 1.4x teleconverter giving me 700mm of focal length.  My settings were 1/800, f/13, and 3200 ISO.  Even though the ISO is somewhat elevated, I had to have a certain amount of depth of field so all of the important elements in this shot were sharp.