Down in Jungleland: A Joy Forever

The beak-eye-flight coordination required for these mid-air maneuvers boggles the mind: it’s hard enough catching a fly or mosquito buzzing in front of your face with your fist, but try doing that using just two fingers!

Bee-eaters usually nest in tunnels (up to two meters deep) excavated in earth or sand banks, in summer (and before the rains). Between two and nine, usually round and white eggs may be laid, and pairs remain faithful through a breeding season (sometimes longer), with both parents bringing up the brats. Gossip has it that there are at least two notorious species (not found in India, where they would have been beaten senseless by the moral police), where, the gentlemen try making out with ladies who are not their partners and some of the ladies promptly deposit their eggs in the tunnels of the pretty girl next door, serve her right! These gents are known to have what has been officially defined as a “very active social life”, which is putting it mildly. But bee-eater families are also known to employ “helpers”: grown-up adolescent children who have not yet properly left the home and who will gladly baby-sit and feed their newly-hatched siblings, thus affirming the fact that big families are happy families.

Some researchers also claim that bee-eaters are amongst the very few non-human entities who are able to see things from another person’s point of view. They can, for example, guess when someone is looking for their nest and adjust their behaviour accordingly to lead him away from it. I would assume that this would mean that the person in question is spotted and his intentions suspected well before he walks up to the nest-hole and thrusts his hand inside to check for eggs or young, which would cause any parent to freak out.

Bee-eaters are usually late risers — possibly because insects only get humming and airborne once the sun is properly up — and can be found huddling together in rows on branches or telephone wires: they love body contact with one another. They also like dust-bathing as it possibly gets rid of parasites in their plumage. At dusk, they roost communally in trees, bickering musically, and, occasionally, when, perhaps, overcome by the day’s excitement, exploding out of the tree in a confetti of backlit wings. They’re related to kingfishers and rollers, and are certainly more svelte and graceful than them.

Apart from the green bee-eater, other common ones to look out for (depending on where you live) are the chestnut-headed one, and the blue-tailed and blue-cheeked — all of whom live up to their descriptive names. They have slightly deeper contraltos than the green-bee-eater and are larger and slower in flight.

It doesn’t really matter which ones they are: if you’re slouching along, grouchy and scowling, and hear a musical trilling from above, look up. The bee-eaters’ graceful aerial ballet will have you enthralled in no time, lifting your spirits right up there with them.