Monday, January 28, 2008

Photographing Blue-Tailed Bee-Eaters

This is another bird that I would like to photography in a more natural setting but there a small group of them that have settled into suburbia. They use the antennas on houses around my place as vantage points to watch for insects. When they do spot insects in flight they take off after the insects and catch them in flight. I love watching them as they are just so graceful in flight. Once an insect is caught, the bee-eater brings it back to their perch. Where they will strike the insect several times on their perch before swallowing the insect. The bird on the right has an insect between its beak.I read that birds that eat insect cast pellets of the exoskeleton. I was thrilled to actually watch this bird cast a pellet but I was too slow to capture the act.

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