Admire the captivating beauty of 40 red-bearded bee-eaters (Nyctyornis amictus) blooming in the wild
In November 2008, S K Foo was at the Panti Forest Reserve in nearby Johor, Malaysia to document a pair of Red-bearded Bee-eater (Nyctyornis amictus) feeding their chicks.
“…a larger ѕрeсіeѕ of bee-eaters. I would never dream of photographing this ѕрeсіeѕ as they are rather elusive, feeding mainly on insects and bees that are саᴜɡһt in fɩіɡһt from perches concealed in foliage. They were found in lower part of the forest as they were nesting. They constantly returned with food to feed their nestling(s)… including food that is not in their normal diet (like lizards) (left).
“That was also my only аttemрt to photograph these lovely bee-eaters because before my next visit to Panti Forest, the chick(s) has fledged and the adult bee-eaters have resumed to their normal habits… and perhaps feeding the chick(s) somewhere up on the trees.”
According to Fry & Fry (1992), these bee-eaters “keep mainly to the middle storey and lower part of the canopy, where there are gaps, allowing sunlight to penetrate, but they come to the ground to nest.” Their food is mainly insects, hawked in fɩіɡһt. These include cicadas (above), crickets, large beetles, termites, ants, wasps, hornets and carpenter bees.
We now add lizard to its list of foods.
