Blue-tailed Bee-eater manipulating a dragonfly

Posted by BESG on 29 November 08, Saturday
Contributed by Johnny Wee

One of bee-eaters’ favourite food, or at least what we perceive as its favourite, is dragonflies. This is because photographers love to document these birds in the act of manipulating a dragonfly prior to swallowing it after its successful aerial chase.

The series of images by Johnny Wee, shows a Blue-tailed Bee-eater (Merops philippinus ) in the process of swallowing a dragonfly after it was properly thrashed against the perch. The bird expertly flipped the insect into the air. With its mandibles opened wide, the bird caught the dragonfly as it fell head-first into the bird’s throat. Once caught between the mandibles, the dragonfly was then immediately swallowed.

The series were photographed at Sungei Balang, Johor, Malaysia on 1st November 2008.


Related Posts:
               
  • Grey Heron and Blue-tailed Bee-eater cooling off The afternoon of 18th October 2008 was excessively hot...
  • Blue-throated Bee-eaters and dragonflies Blue-throated Bee-eaters (Merops viridis) catch dragonflies on the wing...
  • Blue-throated Bee-eater handling a bee As the name implies, the main diet of the...
  • Naval aviation of Blue-tailed Bee-eaters Lin Yangchen photographed three successive stages of dive sequences of...
  • Bee-eaters catching insects Bee-eaters hunt from an exposed perch, waiting for insects to...
  • Food for a kingfisher and a bee-eater "While surveying birds at Tuas recently, Sham and I had...
  • Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

    Email Post

    Categories: Bee-eaters, Feeding strategy, Feeding-invertebrates

    3 Comments

    Pingback by » Bird Ecology Study Group » Blue-tailed Bee-eater manipulating a …

    Made Saturday, 29 of November , 2008 at 12:56 am

    [...] The bird expertly flipped the insect into the air . With its mandibles opened wide, the bird caught the dragonfly as it fell head-first into the bird’s throat More [...]

    Pingback by Bird Ecology Study Group » Blue-tailed Bee-eater manipulating a … | catveranda.com

    Made Saturday, 29 of November , 2008 at 5:41 am

    [...] The rest is here [...]

    Comment by Amber Coakley

    Made Wednesday, 3 of December , 2008 at 8:06 pm

    These are great! Not only a great illustration of behavior, but a beautiful bird too!

    Leave a comment

    XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

    *
    To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
    Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word

    Welcome to the BESGroup website


    "You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world,
    but when you're finished,
    you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird...
    So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing - that's what counts.
    I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."

    Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

    Locations of visitors to this page