Blue-throated Bee-eater

Fascinating facts about the Blue-throated Bee-eater

• A spring crossing recorded in 2000-2001 saw exactly 222 blue-throated bee-eaters fly from Sumatra over the Straits of Malacca, using sea-breezes to glide before perching on a lighthouse for up to ten minutes – a glimpse of how these birds exploit wind to cover hundreds of kilometres without flapping nonstop.
• Adult blue-throated bee-eaters measure about 21 cm long, but their central tail feathers add another 9 cm, giving them a striking tail that doubles the length of their body while they weigh only 34–41 g, a combination that makes them agile hunters in open flats.
• Their nests are dug almost horizontally into flat ground rather than the near-vertical sand cliffs typical of other bee-eaters, allowing colonies of 50 to 200 pairs to thrive on farmland, riverbanks and mangrove edges where the ground is level.
• Long calls performed by stretching the bill upward can be heard over great distances in the forest, a vocal strategy that lets individuals stay in contact while they spread out to hunt bees, wasps and dragonflies up to 42 mm long.
• Blue-throated bee-eaters breed with a generation span of roughly 6.2 years and practice asynchronous brooding, so chicks hatch over ten days and the oldest often kills its younger siblings with a sharp bill hook – a harsh survival tactic that shows how food competition shapes family dynamics.

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