Crossword clues for bee-eater
bee-eater
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bee-eater \Bee"-eat`er\, n. (Zo["o]l.)
A bird of the genus Merops, that feeds especially on bees. The European species ( Merops apiaster) is remarkable for its brilliant colors.
An African bird of the genus Rhinopomastes.
Wiktionary
n. Any of various brightly-coloured, insectivorous, near-passerine birds in the family Meropidae, especially the (vern European bee-eater pedia=1), (taxlink Merops apiaster species noshow=1).
Wikipedia
The bee-eaters are a group of near-passerine birds in the family Meropidae. Most species are found in Africa and Asia but others occur in southern Europe, Australia, and New Guinea. They are characterised by richly coloured plumage, slender bodies, and usually elongated central tail feathers. All have long downturned bills and pointed wings, which give them a swallow-like appearance when seen from afar. There are 26 different species of bee-eaters.
As the name suggests, bee-eaters predominantly eat flying insects, especially bees and wasps, which are caught in the air by sallies from an open perch. While they pursue any type of flying insect, honey bees predominate in their diet. Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) comprise from 20% to 96% of all insects eaten, with honey bees comprising approximately one-third of the Hymenoptera. In the Hymenoptera order, the specific species Apis dorsata is commonly eaten by these birds. These bees attempt to congregate in a mass defense against these birds.
Before eating its meal, a bee-eater removes the stinger by repeatedly hitting and rubbing the insect on a hard surface. During this process, pressure is applied to the insect thereby extracting most of the venom. Notably, the birds only catch prey that are on the wing and ignore flying insects once they land.
Bee-eaters are gregarious. They form colonies by nesting in burrows tunnelled into the side of sandy banks, such as those that have collapsed on the edges of rivers. Their eggs are white and they generally produce 2–9 eggs per clutch (depending on species). As they live in colonies, large numbers of these holes are often seen together, white streaks from their accumulated droppings accentuating the entrances to the nests. Most of the species in the family are monogamous, and both parents care for the young, sometimes with the assistance of other birds in the colony, a behavior considered unusual for birds.
Usage examples of "bee-eater".
There were squadrons of jet-black drongos with long forked tails, starlings of iridescent malachite green, rollers and bee-eaters in jewelled colours of turquoise and sunlight yellow, carmine and purple, jinking and whirling in full flight, ecstatic with greed.
Then the screes and cries of birds sounded, for the bird-sellers were shaking the small wooden cages packed with wood pigeons, owls, mousebirds, bee-eaters, hummingbirds, crows, blue rockthrushes, warblers, flycatchers, wagtails, hawks, falcons, eagles, and all manner of swans, ducks, chickens, and geese.
Where there had been dried river-beds, with drifts of white sand shining like alpine snowfields in the sun, with quiet pools of still green water, and with steep high banks in which the brilliant kingfisher and little jewelled bee-eaters burrowed to nest, there were now maddened torrents of racing brown water, which brimmed over the high banks and carved out the roots of tall trees, toppling them into the flood and whisking them away as though they were mere twigs.
Carmine bee-eaters, Blaine told her, sharing her wonder at the glory of the flashing darts of flaming pink and turquoise blue, with their long delicately streaming tail feathers and pointed wing-tips sharp as stilettos.
Bright yellow bee-eaters streaked across the land like fiery arrows, skimming among the flowers.
It was a wonderfully beautiful day, with a slight and varying but reasonably favourable breeze at last: the sun blazed on the various kinds of broom in flower, upon the Rock, upon the cistuses and giant heath, while an uninterrupted stream of migrant birds, honey-buzzards, black kites, all the European vultures, storks both black and white, bee-eaters, hoopoes and countless hirundines flowed across the sky amidst a general indifference.
I showed them the great colony of fulvous vultures beyond Llops and a distant bear on the slope of the Maladetta, bee-eaters by the hundred in the sandy banks of the Llobregat, and my own place under the Albères, where I brought Jack Aubrey out of France in '03.
Terrel saw again the almost metallic sheen of a polished jasper stone, the vivid plumage of a bee-eater, the glory of the red flowers at Kativa's shrine, and the flare of green light that preceded a desert sunrise.