The blue-cheeked bee-eater (''Merops persicus'') is a

near passerine Near passerines and higher land-bird assemblage are terms of traditional, pre-cladistic taxonomy that have often been given to tree-dwelling birds or those most often believed to be related to the true passerines (order Passeriformes) owing to mor ...

bird in the

bee-eater The bee-eaters are a group of non-passerine birds in the family Meropidae, containing three genera and thirty species. Most species are found in Africa and Asia, with a few in southern Europe, Australia, and New Guinea. They are characterised by ...

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

, Meropidae. The genus name ''Merops'' is

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

for "bee-eater", and ''persicus'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "Persian". It breeds in Northern Africa, and the Middle East from eastern Turkey to Kazakhstan and India. It is generally strongly migratory, wintering in tropical Africa, although some populations breed and live year-round in the

Sahel The Sahel (; ar, ساحل ' , "coast, shore") is a region in North Africa. It is defined as the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Having a hot semi-arid c ...

. This species occurs as a rare vagrant north of its breeding range, with most vagrants occurring in Italy and Greece.

Taxonomy and systematics

Two subspecies are recognized: *''Merops persicus persicus'' - Breeds in Asia, winters in East and Southern Africa. *''Merops persicus chrysocercus'' - Breeds in North Africa, winters in West Africa. This species is closely related to

blue-tailed bee-eater The blue-tailed bee-eater (''Merops philippinus'') is a near passerine bird in the bee-eater family Meropidae. It is widely distributed across South and Southeast Asia where many populations are strongly migratory, and seen seasonally in many pa ...

, ''M. philippinus'' of East Asia, and the olive bee-eater of Africa, and has been treated as being the same species (conspecific).

Description

This species, like other bee-eaters, is a richly coloured, slender bird. It is predominantly green; its face has blue sides with a black eye stripe, and a yellow and brown throat; the beak is black. It can reach a length of , with the two elongated central tail feathers adding another . Sexes are mostly alike but the tail-streamers of the female are shorter. This is a bird which breeds in sub-tropical semi-desert with a few trees, such as acacia. It winters in open woodland or grassland. As the name suggests, bee-eaters predominantly eat

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

s, especially bees,

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

s and

hornet Hornets (insects in the genus ''Vespa'') are the largest of the eusocial wasps, and are similar in appearance to their close relatives yellowjackets. Some species can reach up to in length. They are distinguished from other vespine wasps by th ...

s, which are caught in the air by sorties from an open perch. However, this species probably takes more

dragonflies A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threa ...

than any other food item. Its preferred hunting perch is telephone wires if available. Blue-cheeked bee-eaters may nest solitarily or in loose

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

of up to ten birds. They may also nest in colonies with

European bee-eater The European bee-eater (''Merops apiaster'') is a near passerine bird in the bee-eater family, Meropidae. It breeds in southern and central Europe, northern and southern Africa, and western Asia. Except for the resident southern African populatio ...

s. The nests are located in sandy banks, embankments, low cliffs or on the shore of the Caspian Sea. They make a relatively long tunnel of in length in which the four to eight (usually six or seven), spherical white eggs are laid. Both the male and the female take care of the eggs, although the female alone incubates them at night. Incubation takes 23–26 days. The call sounds 'flatter' and less 'fluty' than the

Merops persicus MHNT ZOO 2010 11 161 Arys Kazakhstan

References

External links

* Blue-cheeked bee-eater
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1951359 blue-cheeked bee-eater Birds of North Africa Birds of West Africa Birds of Central Asia Birds of Western Asia Birds of Afghanistan Birds of Pakistan Birds of Africa blue-cheeked bee-eater Articles containing video clips