COMMON BEE-EATER. 325 
head is suffused with green on the crown and does not extend beyond the 
nape, and the chestnut and yellow on the rest of the upper parts are 
replaced, the one by dark green, and the other by light green. The 
- underparts are also much duller in colour, and the black band between 
the throat and the breast is almost obsolete. The two centre tail-feathers 
are uniform in length with the others. Male birds of the year scarcely 
differ from adult females. 
An example of the Blue-tailed Bee-eater (Merops philippinus), said to 
have been shot by Mr. Thomas Hann, of Byer’s Green near the Snook, 
Seaton Carew, in Durham, in August 1862, is in the collection of the 
Rev. T. M. Hicks (Hancock, ‘ Birds of Northumberland and Durham,’ 
p- 28). This specimen was exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society 
of London, and proved to be a male in adult plumage (Proc. Zool. Soe. 
1883, p. 1). This species is a resident in South-east Asia. It is found 
throughout the Indian and Malay peninsulas, South China, and Formosa, 
extending to many of the islands of the Malay archipelago, Sumatra, 
Java, Timor, Borneo, Celebes, and the Philippines. The improbability of 
a species inhabiting a district so remote and so far to the south ever 
visiting the British Islands is so great that it is difficult to avoid coming 
to the conclusion, either that the individual im question had escaped from 
an aviary, or that the skin of an Indian bird was substituted for that ofa ~ 
Common Bee-eater by the bird-stuffer through whose hands it passed. 
It may be distinguished from the Common Bee-eater by having the 
throat chestnut instead of yellow, and gradually shading into the green of 
the breast instead of being separated from it by a black band. 
an example in my collection from Italy ; and it is needless to say that a correct description 
of this species in all stages of plumage is to be found in Naumann’s ‘ Birds of Germany,’ a 
work the superiority of which to all modern books on birds becomes the more apparent 
the more closely it is studied. 
