The Bee-Eater Brings Us Colours from Africa

By Jose Luis Gallego, environmental communicator (@ecogallego)

In the areas around vineyards, especially when these are nestled into open country with earthy slopes, such as the banks of a river or a ravine, we find some of the best spots to enjoy nature by observing one of the most beautiful and colourful birds of the European continent: the bee-eater.    

The European bee-eater, which ornithologists classify under the scientific name Merops apiaster, is a spectacular bird. When first spotting a bee-eater in the wild, many people might mistake it for an exotic bird that has escaped from some private collection. However, although the bee-eater boasts African colours, it is an indigenous species and highly representative of the Mediterranean woodland. The bird is quite common across the entire Iberian peninsula save for the north. Curiously, the most African of our birds is also absent from the Canary Islands.

Bee-eater, photo by Ana Mínguez. 

The plumage of this member of the Meropidae family (the only one in Europe) could not be more dazzling. Not even the most daring of fashion designers could have dreamed up such a splendid coat in a palette usually associated with African grasslands and jungles. On the back, the bee-eater sports a vivid chestnut hue, almost garnet, combined with swaths of creamy yellow, toasty brown, and the colour of damp clay. The chest is a very bright, gorgeous shade of turquoise blue complemented by the lemon yellow at the throat, so intense it seems painted on with a flourescent marker. 

The same palette repeats on the wings, creating a vivid feathered tapestry with an extra splash of forest green on the shoulders. Gazing out from its sophisticated and distinguished head are a pair of black-spectacled red eyes, which only add to the bee-eater’s exotic and mysterious appearance. The long tail tapers to a sharp point, a trademark of the bird’s distinctive silhouette, whereas the thin curved bill equips the bee-eater with a truly expert tool. 

In flight, the bee-eater emits a characteristic and unmistakable call, a flute-like pipping sound (trrrucc, trrrucc) that announces its presence even when the bird is still faraway and flying high. The bee-eater’s silhouette in flight is equally distinctive: tapered wings and a long tail with rectrices that jut out over the other quill feathers. When flying, it draws elegant gliding semicircles in the sky combined with brief but very intense bursts of wing flapping. The bee-eater likes perching on electrical wires and on dry tree branches where several birds tend to gather together in large groups.  

This shows the gregarious nature of the bee-eater, a bird which never leaves its community. Bee-eaters migrate as a flock, fly as a group, and form nesting colonies: they are always together! When building a nest, the bee-eater seeks out clayey slopes, ravines, and river banks where it digs out tunnels that can be up to two metres deep. It is truly a monument to strength and determination since each pair of bee-eaters can dig up and remove up to ten kilos of soil solely by picking at the ground with their bills: considering that these birds are 28 centimetres long and weigh 60 grams, this represents a herculean effort.    

One of the most striking aspects of the biology and behaviour of the bee-eater is its highly specialized diet. Bees (a particular passion, hence the name), flies, horseflies, and cicadas comprise the foundation of the bird’s exclusively insect-based diet. For a little variety, the bird might add ants, grasshoppers, beetles, crickets, and any other available insect to the mix.  

A bee-eater eating an insect, photo by Ana Mínguez. 

The bee-eater is a very successful hunter and this is due to its perfectly designed bill: a tool to rival the forceps of an entomologist, with a grip so tight, no insect can hope to escape.  It’s therefore not unusual to see a bee-eater perched on a branch like an avian emperor with an enormous dragonfly trapped in its bill just moments before it is eaten for breakfast.

By contrast, if we see one bee-eater perched on top of another, especially during the month of May, the situation has other connotations. The most colourful of our birds do not hesitate to comply with their genetic mandate to make more of themselves by copulating on slim treetop branches and on telephone wires. 

As far as their migratory phenology, that is to say their seasonal habits and patterns, the first bee-eaters reach the Iberian peninsula from tropical Africa, Guinea, Ghana, and Senegal in late March, but flocks continue arriving until well into the month of April. Throughout the spring and summer, they brighten our skies with music and colour. 

Unless they return directly to their habitual breeding ground, bee-eaters will roam the fields for a while in search of a good nesting spot. In early May, they will pick a place on an earthy slope along a path or river bank and begin digging into the ground. Occasionally they might even nest directly at ground level, even among vineyard rows, but this is uncommon. 

 A pair of bee-eaters, photo by Ana Mínguez. 

The female usually lays her eggs in May or June: a clutch of 5 to 6 almost perfectly round eggs, which she will incubate for three weeks. In July, bee-eater nests are a cacophony of calls, with the harried parents flying in and out constantly to keep up with the voracious appetite of their offspring. Inside the earthy nest, however, the atmosphere is calm and well-organized since the chicks quickly establish a hierarchy and then obediently wait their turn to be fed.  

By August, all of the chicks will have left the nest. Once the reproductive task is done, the bee-eaters prepare to return to their wintering grounds beyond the Sahara, a journey that begins towards the end of the month. The majority of the birds cross the strait in September, when we can observe hundreds of thousands of bee-eaters, in groups of about thirty, leave the Spanish mainland en route to the African steppes.  By October, all of the bee-eaters will have left the Iberian peninsula.  If everything goes well, they will be back next year to once again brighten the skies above our fields with their dazzling colours.