254 : European Bee Eater

European Bee Eater - Merops apiaster

Wednesday (April 10 2013) found me bunking off from work at lunchtime for a quick spin round to Safa Park. A large open and wooded area in the middle of Dubai. Dubai's equivalent of Central or Hyde Park. I spent (what I thought at the time) a fairly fruitless half and hour or so toiling round the little wood in the middle - a small copse of Cyprus and Tamarisk trees with an open under storey of leaf and pine litter.

Then a clear chirrup and at tree height a fairly large and delta-winged Bee Eater hoved into view. Excitement took over and I shambled out into the lunchtime sunshine straining to catch a glimpse of a migrant I knew was on passage but had not figured on connecting with. They were everywhere.

Perhaps 20 or so birds in a big loose flock stack up at different levels in the sky from the treetops to a couple of thousand feet.

I did my best with what are fast moving and skirling birds - I think I do need to go back to square one and learn a bit more about cameras. So if you saw a man in a suit looking at the sky with an oversized camera turning circles and cursing this week - that was me - or one of me. I was as happy as Larry though.

These Bee Eaters travel in family clans back to breeding sites where they excavate new breeding holes in the sides of quarries, river banks, bluffs and the like. They will have picked up and swapped new females from a completely different area to keep the gene pool fresh down in Africa. So Spanish ladies will get led North by Kazakh men and vice versa. You wonder whether they can understand each other for the first few weeks. Its not all plain sailing. Its a risky strategy this long rang migration. The journies are timed to arrive in Europe when the Bee population is waking from its slumber. In some places they are shot and culled by commercial bee keepers. I have read that 30% of each wandering clan will not make it back North.

As if to illustrate the point A Shikra (an Eastern type of Sparrowhawk) made a dash down into the flock which dispersed in short order. I noticed that the sparrowhawk came out of the sun, like a Messerschmidt pilot in Battle of Britain.

And off they were chased.

Shikra again eyeing up a target.

So the world's skies are one giant Serengetti at the moment with Peregrines, Hobbies, Hawks and Harriers picking off the smaller birds like so many game on the grass plains. Its not a moral tale - it just is what it is. There is a lot of beauty in there along the way.

European Bee Eater, Merops Apiaster 
Safa Park, Dubai
April 10 2013