COMMON BEE-EATER. 



325 



head is suffused with green on the crown and does not extend beyond the 

 napcj and the chestnut and yellow on the rest of the upper parts are 

 replaced, the one hy 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. 8oc. 

 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 in question had escaped from 

 an aviary, or that the skin of an Indian bird was substituted for that of a 

 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 aU 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. 



-ese^% 



