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.sit until your chair and you alike take root, or crumble into dust

as the case may be, before ever a Bee-eater will come your way.

For the majority of the stay-at-home inhabitants of these Islands

pass their lives without seeing so much as a single specimen of

this interesting species. And should you trust to the dealers, to

whom, you know, you have only just to “state your wants,” you

will probably fare as badly; captive Bee-eaters, I am well aware,

have previously found their way to this country, but their visits

have been much rarer even than those of the wild bird.


Before I take up the story of the two little troublesome

pets which have stirred up my slumbering pen to write this

article, I may well say a few words about Bee-eaters generally.


There are some seventeen species of true Bee-eaters

( tl/erops ), which may be distinguished from their kinsfolk by

the elongation of the central tail-feathers (see uncoloured

illustration) ; and some one or more of these may be found in

Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, but not in America. They

are bright coloured, short legged, long winged, curved billed,

slim birds of the air, taking most of their prey on the wing ;

like Swifts when aloft, like Terns when on the ground, like

Todies ( Todus ) when sitting side by side on a perch. Like

Todies and Sand Martins, they breed in colonies, in holes in the

banks of rivers, etc., from preference, but in other holes, even in

holes on the level ground, when more convenient premises are

not forthcoming. The holes are tunnelled by the birds them¬

selves with their bills, and the eggs are pure white ; no nest is

made. Mr. Layard (Royal Natural History , Vol. IV. p. 55) says

of the nest-holes:—“ It does not always seledt a bank into which

to bore the hole destined for it’s nest, for we found one flat piece

of sandy ground perforated with numberless holes, into which

the birds were diving and scrambling like so many rats.”


The Common or European Bee-eater is the only species of

the genus which regularly visits and breeds in Europe ; but it is

by no means confined to Europe, for it’s range extends as far to

the East as North-east India ; and, as has been already stated, it

breeds in Northern Africa, that continent generally being like¬

wise it’s winter home, where in the autumn it is by some supposed

to breed a second time; but we have no means of knowing that

the individuals which have been found breeding south of the

equator in the autumn are.the identical birds which bred or

will breed, in the previous or following summer, on the shores of

the Mediterranean.


'l'lie adult Bee-eater is about ten inches in length, and the



