Blue-cheeked bee-eater: Merops persicus

Blue-cheeked bee-eater
Merops persicus

Blue-cheeked bee-eater: Merops persicus

Age: Adult

IUCN Status: Least Concern

Sighted at: Village Sultanpur, Distt. Gurgaon, Haryana, India.

Date: 27.6.2015

A peculiarity I noticed while observing this representative – probably a female given its shorter tail compared to the other bird - with a Golden dragonfly catch is she exhibited the prize to at least two bee-eaters who didn’t show much interest and ultimately she flew into one of the holes carved out in the sand dune. This region appeared to be a nesting region and these birds flew in and out of holes carved out of these mud-sand dunes.

 

Key features  are:

 

1)     Summer visitor

2)   Passage migrant

3)   Bronze-green tail

4)   Whitish forehead

5)    Turquoise and white supercilium

6)   Black eye stripe

7)    Turquoise and green ear coverts

8)   Yellow chin

9)   Chestnut throat

10)           Upperparts and underparts are rich green with turquoise wash

Taxonomy:

Kingdom	-	Animalia
Phylum	-	Chordata
Class	-	Aves
Order	-	Coraciformes
Family	-	Meropidae
Genus	-	Merops
Species	-	persicus

 

Photographed at Desert beyond Sultanpur, Distt.Gurgaon, Haryana, India, on 27^th June, 2015, using a Nikon D7200 camera and Tamron 150-600 mm lens.

© Prashant V Tenjarla