Southern Carmine Bee-eater

About the Southern Carmine Bee-eater

The southern carmine bee-eater (Merops nubicoides) is a species of bee-eater found across sub-equatorial Africa. It was formerly considered conspecific with the closely related northern carmine bee-eater, with the combined species then known as carmine bee-eater.

This species, like other bee-eaters, is richly coloured and is predominantly carmine in colouration, but the crown and undertail are blue. The southern carmine bee-eater occurs from KwaZulu-Natal and Namibia to Gabon, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya. The bee-eater is a migratory species, spending the breeding season, between August and November, in Zimbabwe and Zambia, before moving as far south as South Africa for the summer months, and then migrating to Equatorial Africa from March to August.

Their diet is made up primarily of bees and other flying insects, and their major hunting strategy involves hawking flying insects from perch. Perches may include branches of vegetation or even the backs of large animals, such as the kori bustard. They are attracted to wildfires because of the flushed insects, and are often seen circling high in... Wikipedia →