"Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A fairly common bird in the Punescape, the green bee-eater is usually seen perched on wires and fences in thin scrub and grassland type patches which surround our city.
Green bee-eaters feed predominantly on insects, especially bees, wasps and butterflies which they catch in short aerial sorties from an open perch. This is followed by repeatedly thrashing its prey against the perch to remove its sting and break its exoskeleton before swallowing it.
Structural colouration rather than pigmentation is responsible for the blues and greens of the feathers of many birds. Structural colours are produced by the interference and scattering, caused by the micro-scopic structure of a material. Scattering is produced when the keratin of feathers is interspersed with tiny air pockets within the structure of the feathers themselves. These air pockets and the interspersed keratin scatter blue and green light and produce the shimmering colours of birds like kingfishers, rollers and bee-eaters.
Green bee-eater
(Merops orientalis)
Sony A77II
Tamron 150-600
f/6.3, 1/800s, ISO500, 420mm
Kahun Road, Pune (India)
Dec 2019