This bird is easily recognizable by its colorful plumage and elongated body shape. She is very agile and preys on insects in the air. She especially likes bees. Therefore, modern beekeepers attribute it to pests, although this is not very fair. For information, there are a total of 28 species of bee-eater, 18 of them live in Africa.
Golden bee-eater: description
This bird (by other bee-eater) belongs to the family of bee-eater. She also has names - scrofula and jaundice. The beak is long (3.5 cm) and slightly curved downward. The head in the area of the beak is white, and at the crown - bluish-green. A stripe of black color passes through the eye to the beak from the ear. The iris is red. The plumage on the throat is golden yellow, separated from the chest by a black stripe. The back is painted ocher yellow. The wings of the bee-eater are green, blue and brown, the wedge-shaped tail is greenish-blue with steering feathers in the amount of ten pieces, two of which (medium) are elongated. The legs have a reddish-brown tint.
The female differs from the male by the presence of a greenish tint on the back. The forehead of young bee-eater has a yellowish tint, and on their chest they have no black strip. The size of a golden bee-eater is a little more than a starling. Weight - 50 grams. You can distinguish these birds from other birds by their bright, shiny plumage, wings with pointed, slightly curved beaks and short legs. Their nesting place is burrows dug in earthen or sandy steep banks.
Distribution and habitat
This species of migratory bird refers to migrating over long distances. In summer, the golden beetle bird lives in Europe (south and southeast) and in Asia (southwest), and in winter it flies to Africa (south of the Sahara desert), South Arabia and East India. It is known that in places where summers are short and humid, bee-eater do not live. The nesting places of this bird are the territories of North Africa, some areas of South-West Asia and South Africa.
It should be noted that in Italy the population of these birds (approximately 5-10 thousand pairs) nests, rising to a height of 500 meters above sea level.
Lifestyle, habits
In its flight, the golden bee-eater (photo is presented in the article) resembles a swallow and a swift. Usually they fly in packs and often sit on bushes, trees, wire and telegraph poles, as well as on hedges. During the flight they emit a piercing scream that can be heard over long distances.
Birds nest right in the ground, on steep slopes and cliffs, very often in gullies, ravines and along river banks. They make holes in the steep wall with a diameter of about 5-6 cm (about 1 meter below the surface of the soil). Chicks fly out of the nest in mid-summer. Bee-eats arrive from wintering places in April-May. Before flying to warmer climes, they close up their nests with clay to prevent other birds from populating them.
Bee-eater prey on insects on sunny and quiet days, rising to a great height, and in lower windy conditions. Rainy and cloudy days are not an obstacle for them, they get food almost at the surface of the earth. In such weather, they also adapted to fly to apiaries, where they boldly sit on beehives (arrival boards) and grab bees from letoki. They can also fall to the ground, closer to the burrows of bumblebees, which are also happy to destroy.
Flight
The flight of the bee-eater is agile and quick. Several times she flaps her wings very quickly, then soars at high speed. Her flight, as noted above, is similar to the flight of a swallow and starling. Sometimes a bird freezes for a moment in the air and then, quickly flapping its wings, begins to flutter like a kestrel or small fawn. In the morning or in the afternoon, in hot and sunny weather, the bees fly up into the sky and fly at such a height that they cannot even be seen with the naked eye.
Voice of the Golden Bee-eater
Absolutely all bee-eater - birds are bright and colorful. But they attract attention to themselves with an iridescent sound in the form of “pru-u-hipp”, published by them during take-off. The most common bird callsigns in a variety of situations, although quiet, are audible over long distances. These are short trills and sounds: "squint", "crru", "crru". Moreover, these birds publish them constantly. When a large tree with a dried peak is found on the outskirts of the forest, stray flocks of golden bee-eater perch on its bare branches and let out a little muffled cries of themselves.
Food
The diet of the golden bee-eater includes exclusively insects. This includes almost all flying species and only some creeping. Second ones also hunt in flight - they pick them up from the tops of plants. The daily diet of an adult bird is about 40 grams of insects. This corresponds to approximately 225 bees. First of all, the bee-eater eats hymenoptera (bees and wasps), dipterans and orthopterans (mosquito-turtles), larvae of dragonflies and adults, beetles (black beetles, leaf beetles, ground beetles) and butterflies. The diet includes midges, mosquitoes and even bumblebees and hornets.
The beetle hits the prey on a hard surface and crushes it well, which helps it not to be stung when swallowed. The chitinous shell and wings of insects the bird later gnaws to small balls.
Nesting
For some time after the flight, both the golden bee-eater and other birds of this family settle, then begin to accumulate near their usual nesting places (near ravines, cliffs, river banks). Sometimes groups of several pairs arrange their nests close to each other, but more often larger colonies (up to several hundred pairs) nest on one cliff. In the absence of suitable steep sections, birds can make burrows on even ground surfaces. However, they are more attracted to steep cliffs up to 3-5 meters high.
Socket device
They have been preparing the nest hole for quite some time. Male and female dig them with their beaks, and kick the ground with their feet, backing back to the exit. The birds are mainly engaged in such work in the morning and evening hours (from about 9 to 10 and 17 to 18 hours). The whole process of preparing the nest lasts 10-20 days, depending on the hardness of the soil. For all the time of such work, birds throw about 12 kg of soil out of the hole.
The length of the finished hole is 1-1.5 m (sometimes up to 2 m). In the Caucasus, you can find burrows up to 60 cm in depth. At the end of it, the golden bee-eater arranges some expansion - a nesting chamber, where in April-June it lays about 6-7 eggs of white color. They hatch by both parents for about 20 days. 20-25 days after hatching, young chicks fly out of the parent nest. In just one year, one clutch is completed.
Beekeeping and bee-eater
One golden bee-eater when eating only bees can eat up to 1000 pieces a day. Where apiaries are located, approximately 80-90% of the insects eaten by these birds are bees. If we consider that one family of flying bees totals 30, 000 individuals, then the bee-eater alone destroys about 2-3%. A pair of bee-eater during the summer months can destroy up to 2 thousand bees, and a whole flock (about 100 birds) can turn an entire apiary (about 50 families) into a waste.
There were cases when up to 180 bees were found in one goiter in a goiter, and in the tongue there were a lot of their stings. Curious is the fact that the poison does not act on these birds. Bees are harmful to beekeeping and away from the apiary, since they catch bees during their flight to honey plants. They bring the greatest harm in July-August and until mid-September. Regarding the benefits of bee-eater in the extermination of insects harmful to forestry and agriculture, we can say that it is very small.
Number
In some areas of Europe, the numbers of these birds are declining. Unfortunately, the main reason is the massive harassment of these feathered beekeepers, especially African ones. But there are some places, for example, the Padan plain of Italy, where there is an increase in the number of golden bee-eater. The Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature includes this rare bird on its list.
About the dangers of birds and the protection of bees from them
In addition to the fact that bees flying in packs to apiaries are capable of destroying a considerable number of collecting bees, thereby reducing honey collection, there is one more harm from them. Golden bees also destroy bumblebees, causing great damage to the cultivation and seed production of clover.
Unfortunately, the protection of bees from this bird is based on the destruction of its nests by any means. There are even recommendations to destroy adult birds and chicks right in the nests with chloropicrin or carbon disulfide. Such rather cruel events are usually held in the spring, almost immediately after the arrival of birds from wintering places. In the evenings, when all the birds are in burrows, they throw balls from tow, previously soaked with the above means, into their nests and cover them with earth. Under the influence of gases, bee-eater die. This is a terrible way to fight birds. Also one of the most affordable measures to help protect the apiary from these birds is their shooting from a gun.
Today, beekeepers are literally teeming with complaints about problems in apiaries. They are associated with wasps, mice, moths, hornets, and also with voracious golden bee-eater. “They will devour everyone: wasps and hornets. But they won’t leave the bees either ”- statements on the forums. According to such reviews, we can conclude that for beekeepers these birds are a real misfortune.
Other bird protection measures
In addition to the cruel fighting methods described above, other measures can be taken to prevent harm from the life of the bee-eater:
- In June-July (the reproductive period in birds), from apiaries to large bee-eater settlements, it is necessary to maintain a distance of at least 3 kilometers. This should be taken into account.
- If there is no possibility to move apiaries, birds should be forced to change the colony's location, destroying burrows and closing their exits (only after the end of the reproduction period).
- When the bee-eater appears near apiaries, they can be scared away with the help of birds of prey or single shots.
