Blue-tailed bee-eater

Hello Goa, said the bee-eater, or that is atleast what I thought it said. During the same birding walk that I described in my previous post, we spotted this bee-eater.  For a while, we thought it to be the Green Bee-eater (Merops orientalis) commonly found in peninsular India. As the bird changed perch, the change in light helped us get a better look at the bird and behold we were face to face with a winter visitor- The Blue-tailed bee-eater (Merops philippinus). The bird breeds in North and north-east India and spends it's winters in the warmer southern India.
Like the name suggests the bee-eater eats bees and also other insects like wasp, hornets and ants, all of which have a nasty habit of stinging. The bird's long beak, helps to keep these stingers at a distance, away from its eyes. Once a prey is caught after a zigzag pursuit, the bird removes the sting by beating it against something, or by just squeezing the prey. All this does not mean that the bird does not eat non-stinging insects, it does enjoy dragonflies, butterflies and moth too. So it's not just the humans that eek out a living on the bee, the bee-eater does it too.
A few pair of bee-eaters make their nest every year in our backyard. The nest that comes to our mind is the one that is built on trees, with reeds and twigs. But unlike that, the bee-eaters, digs a burrow in soft ground. I enjoy watching, the bee-eaters dig out burrows using their feet and beaks. The ground based nest means snakes and rats take their toll of eggs and chicks; many pairs are left without brood. Bee-eaters that have failed to find a pair or lost their brood help out a relative with a family to feed. As older birds tend to be more successful at breeding, it is normally young birds that help the parents- which generally turns out to be brothers or sisters, hatched during the previous year.
As one drives around Goa, it is quite common too see bee-eaters or Drongos lined up on power cables, looking for flying insects, which are disturbed from ground as people or animals walk- it is a common character with all bee-eaters. The East African bee-eaters, where there are no power cables, hitch a ride on Kori bustard (the worlds heaviest flying bird). As a foraging bustard walks through the grass flushing out insects, the bee-eater sitting on the back flies off briefly and snaps them up. It is the only recorded example of one bird hitching a ride on another in order to obtain food. 

Green Bee eater

This Green Bee-eater, is the resident bird of our yard. It is a pleasure watching him catch insects mid air.

This is a full colour photograph, but the background and the foreground elements were such that they were in shades of grey, giving this image a unique look.

All the photographs were taken during different dates between February and April of this year.

Recently he found a mate and they started digging, probably to start building a nest ( It took me some time to realise that). The hole in the photograph was made by me, some days ago, when I used some soil for potting. They have now borrowed in that hole made it bigger and are clearing the soil around it. 

European Bee eater

Compliments of the season to all of you and mega apologies for not updating this blog for such a long time. I was out sailing for the last 8 months, on what was suppose to be a 4 months call of duty. On the brighter side, It was an lovely opportunity to photograph some beautiful migratory birds that landed on board my ship.My ship was trading in the Mediterranean and black sea and most of the birds I encountered were the ones migrating from Europe to Africa or vice-versa.For the next couple of days I will post photographs of some of these birds and will now start with my first encounter that happened on May The bird was the colourful European Bee eater (Merops apiaster), a bird which breeds in southern Europe or north Africa . It migrates and spends its winter in Tropical Africa reaching all the way to India and Sri Lanka. It is a very rare visitor to India but there are many sightings of this bird in India.
Like all other Bee eaters this one too prefers flying insects and lets alone insects that have landed.
Poor light made photography difficult when these colourful birds landed on board, nevertheless, it was a pleasure watching such rainbow of colours flying all around. Its nearly useless having a tripod on board a ship, the vibrations of the engine are transmitted onto the camera, via the tripod making sharp images at slow shutter speed nearly impossible. Hand held camera shots are the only solution and eight months on board with no tripod did help me to improve my hand held images.

Little Green Bee-eater

Photographed these Little Green Bee-eaters at Goa's Anjuna Beach. In the first photograph the bird snaps a flying insect from midair. Just as the name suggests, bee-eaters predominantly eat insects,which are caught in the air by sorties from an open perch. Before eating its meal, a bee-eater removes the sting by repeatedly hitting the insect on a hard surface.
This bird has also got a ability to looks at things in others point of view, hence while building nests it chooses a place, after deciding how a predator will look at it. Its never too much for a bird!