BEE-EATER. 441 



fact not easy of explanation, and also that so soon as the 

 young can take wing both they and their parents quit 

 their breeding-stations. It remains to be said that in some 

 favourite places from fifty to seventy pairs of Bee-eaters may 

 be found breeding within the space of a few yards. 



Examples of this bird killed in this country are generally 

 found to have been feeding upon humble-bees ; but the 

 honey-bee, wasps of several species, grasshoppers, locusts 

 and many kinds of beetles are also captured by it — often as 

 they fly, but also by the bird watching from an elevated 

 perch until the insects alight, when they are rapidly snatched 

 away. The prey is almost always seized across the body, 

 and a few sharp pinches of the bill deprive it of life, or at 

 least of the power of retaliating by its sting, if it possess one. 

 More than three centuries ago Belon* related of his own 

 observation that in Crete the boys used to transfix a Cicada 

 with a bent pin, to the head of which a thread was tied, and 

 then, holding its other end in their hand and letting the 

 insect fly, the Bee-eater would dart upon it, and swallowing 

 the bait be caught by the hook. The swift and lofty flight 

 of this bird, which, though its movements are slower, some 

 writers compare to that of a Swallow, has been often noticed, 

 among others by Sir C. Fellows (Ann. Nat. Hist. iv. p. 213), 

 who remarks on the "rich warbling 'chirp' " (which Col. 

 Irby syllables teerrp) it utters on the wing ; but some ob- 

 servers call this note harsh. 



In the adult male the bill is nearly black : the irides red : 

 the lores and ear-coverts black ; forehead white, passing into 

 verditer-blue, which extends in a line under the eye ; top of 

 the head, neck, mantle and base of the wing-coverts, rich 

 chestnut, passing on the lower part of the back into saffron- 

 yellow ; anterior wing-coverts dull bluish-green ; primaries 

 greenish-blue, the shaft, tip and border of the inner web, 



* 'Hist, de la Nat. des Ojseaux,' p. 225, and ' Observationes ' (ed. Clusius), 

 lib. i. Ray gives an English version of the passage in his translation of 

 Willughby's 'Ornithology' (p. 148) : the rendering quoted in former editions 

 of the present work is from Shaw (Nat. Misc. no. 162) and is less accurate. 

 Belon also says tbat this bird feeds on the seeds of various plants and on corn, a 

 statement apparently not confirmed by recent observers. 



