The southern carmine bee-eater (''Merops nubicoides'') is a species of

bee-eater The bee-eaters are a group of birds in the family (biology), family Meropidae, containing three genera and thirty-one species. Most species are found in Africa and Asia, with a few in southern Europe, Australia, and New Guinea. They are characte ...

found across sub-equatorial

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

. It was formerly considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

with the closely related northern carmine bee-eater, with the combined species then known as carmine bee-eater.

Description

This species, like other bee-eaters, is richly coloured and is predominantly

carmine Carmine ()also called cochineal (when it is extracted from the Cochineal, cochineal insect), cochineal extract, crimson Lake pigment, lake, or carmine lake is a pigment of a bright-red color obtained from the aluminium coordination complex, compl ...

in colouration, but the crown and undertail are blue.

Range and movements

The southern carmine bee-eater occurs from

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN) is a Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu people, Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu language, Zulu) and ...

and

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

, the eastern

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

and

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

. The bee-eater is a migratory species, spending the breeding season, between August and November, in

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

and

Zambia Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bor ...

, before moving as far south as

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

for the summer months, and then migrating to Equatorial Africa from March to August.

Diet and foraging

Their diet is made up primarily of bees and other flying

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

s, 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

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...

s because of the flushed

s, and are often seen circling high in the air. They circle larger animals and even cars to catch the insects that are trying to escape.

Habitat and breeding

Its usual habitat included low-altitude river valleys and

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrolog ...

s, preferring vertical banks suitable for tunneling when breeding, but readily digging vertical burrows in the level surface of small salt islands. This is a highly sociable species, gathering in large flocks, in or out of breeding season. They roost communally in trees or reedbeds, and disperse widely during the day. Nesting is at the end of a 1 to 2 meter long burrow in an earthen bank, where they lay from 2 to 5 eggs.

Gallery

Southern carmine bee-eater, Merops nubicoides, Chobe National Park, Botswana (31649416003).jpg, Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori) and Southern Carmine Bee-eater (Merops nubicoides) (6021439753).jpg, Southern Carmine Bee-eater (Merops nubicoides) hunting over Southern Ground Hornbills (Bucorvus leadbeateri) (17354924075).jpg, Southern carmine bee-eater, Merops nubicoides, Savuti marsh, Chobe National Park, Botswana (32462175975).jpg, Southern carmine bee-eater, Merops nubicoides, Savuti marsh, Chobe National Park, Botswana (32462176535).jpg, Southern carmine bee-eater, Merops nubicoides, Savuti marsh, Chobe National Park, Botswana (31650329123).jpg,

References

*Roberts' Birds of Southern Africa - 6th edition (John Voelcker Fund, 1993)

External links

*(Southern) Carmine Bee-eater
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q973061 southern carmine bee-eater Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa southern carmine bee-eater