THE



Hvicultural fllbagastne,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AV1CU LTURAL SOCIETY.



VOL. VIII.—NO. 6. All rights reserved. APRIL, 1902.


THE EUROPEAN BEE-EATER.


Merops cipiastcr.


By Reginald Phillipps.


A common bird is the European Bee-eater ; ho ! a rare rare

bird is the European Bee-eater—just according to circumstances.

If you will pack up your trunks, and take your walks abroad in

the summer time, you will find the species pretty generally

distributed around the Mediterranean, growing rapidly scarcer

as you travel towards the cold, though a few misguided

individuals straggle quite a considerable way northwards. In

some parts of Greece, Turkey, South Russia, Asia Minor, and

Northern Africa, at certain seasons it is common. It would like

to be common in Southern Italy, but the Italians make their

country too hot even for such a heat-loving species as the Bee-

eater, for the Italians’ one idea of aviculture is to eat the birds.

Round and about Tangier, it receives a gentler welcome, for

there it breeds, or used to breed, in the walls of the courtyards

of the inhabitants. And as to Spain, well, in Southern Spain

the natives use it as a means by which to partake of their hone}’,

and this is how it is done. The bees gather the honey, the Bee-

eaters partake of the bees, and the bee-owners partake of the

Bee-eaters—an arrangement which sounds as if it were perfectly

fair and equitable to all parties; and, indeed, it is only the cries

of the bee-owners which, so far, have reached our ears—but it is

not always those who shriek the loudest who are hit the hardest !


Nevertheless, on the other hand, if, like the typical

Britisher (who lets his country go to the —, to the Germans, I

mean, just from want of a little energy and enterprise), you will

not go to look for the bird, but say, “ Books tell me that the Bee-

eater is a British species, and has appeared to the English, to

the Irish, yea, even to the Scotch, and it may just come and

appear to me; I will take my most comfortable arm-chair, and

sit in my garden until I see a Bee-eater” ;—well, there you may



