BLUE-THROATED BEE-EATER Merops viridis 藍喉蜂虎
Category I. Rare spring and autumn passage migrant.
IDENTIFICATION
May 2010, Michelle and Peter Wong.
May 2010, Michelle and Peter Wong.
21-23.5 cm (plus 9 cm streamers). Sexes alike. The adult has a chestnut crown and mantle, green wings with turquoise tertials, pale blue rump and uppertail coverts, blue tail with long pointed blue streamers, black mask through eye, and blue chin, throat and cheeks, strongly demarcated from green breast. Underside of the wing pale rufous. Juvenile has crown, mantle and wings green, with bluish upperwing coverts and tertials, pale blue rump, uppertail coverts and tail, black mask, pale buff chin, and pale blue throat merging into pale green breast and belly; the tail is square-ended, lacking streamers. Distinguished from the much commoner Blue-tailed Bee-eater by coloration of head and throat.
VOCALISATIONS
Slightly lower-pitched and richer than the calls of Blue-tailed Bee-eater M. philippinus.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Most records have been in open, low-lying wetland areas in the New Territories where perches such as branches of bare trees and electricity wires are readily available. One recent sighting at Tsing Tam Reservoir was in a forested area c. 125m above sea-level.
OCCURRENCE
A rare spring and autumn passage migrant, records have occurred from 28 April to 30 May in spring and 17 September to 11 October in autumn:
1991: ten at Mai Po on 25 September (Holmes 1992).
1992: one at Clearwater Bay on 19 & 20 May.
2002: one at Tsim Bei Tsui on 6 October.
2006: one at Po Toi on 17 September.
2008: three to seven at Shuen Wan on 28 April.
2010: one at Long Valley on 29 & 30 May.
2019: one at Nam Chung on 29 May.
2020: five at Tsing Tam Reservoir on 9 May.
One at Mai Po on 11 October 2020 that showed signs of cage damage had previously been observed at Futian Mangrove Ecological Park, Shenzhen.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Regularly perches on service wires and bare trees to rest or to look out for insect prey.
One at Shuen Wan on 28 April 2008 was seen in flight with a dragonfly in its bill. Main food items probably also include honey bees.
SYSTEMATICS & RANGE
Monotypic. Resident in southern Thailand, Indochina (except much of Laos), and Malaysia south to Sumatra, Java and Borneo. It breeds northeast to north Vietnam and southern China. Migrants winter within the range of resident populations (Fry and Boesman 2020). In south and southeast China, it breeds in Hainan (Lewthwaite et al 2021), Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Henan (Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend stable.
Fry, H. and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Blue-throated Bee-eater (Merops viridis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.btbeat2.01
Holmes, J. (1992). Blue-throated Bee-eater at Mai Po: a new species for Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Report 1991: 110-111.
Lewthwaite, R. W., F. Li, and B. P. L. Chan (2021a). An Annotated List of the Birds of Hainan Island, China. Journal of Asian Ornithology 37: 6-28.
Lewthwaite, R. W., F. Li, and B. P. L. Chan (2021b). Online Supplement to “An Annotated Checklist of the Birds of Hainan Island, China”. Available at https://www.kfbg.org/images/download/hainan-bird-checklist-supplement.pdf
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House.
