Blue-cheeked Bee-eater

How to identify

Field marks

1. Sides of face blue; eyestripe black
2. Body mostly green
3. Throat two-toned yellow and brown
4. Two central tail feathers elongated

Male, female and young

Sexes broadly similar; female has shorter elongated tail feathers.

Voice

Calls are flatter and less flute-like than those of Blue-tailed Bee-eater.

Where and when it's recorded

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater has been recorded at 548 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 67 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. Changaram Wetlands – EzhupunnaIndia1,127 records
2. Al Jahra Reserve (Restricted access)Kuwait825 records
3. International Birding and Research Center Eilat (IBRCE)Israel803 records

Countries and regions with the most records

IndiaUnited Arab EmiratesIsraelSouth AfricaKuwaitGambiaUgandaKenya

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The blue-cheeked bee-eater (Merops persicus) is a species of bee-eater that breeds in Northern Africa and the Middle East from eastern Turkey to Kazakhstan and India. It is generally strongly migratory, wintering in tropical Africa, although some populations are resident year-round in the Sahel. This species occurs as a rare vagrant north of its breeding range, with most vagrants occurring in Italy and Greece.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions