More Pictures of the Black Bee-eater!

I thought I would post a couple more digiscoped shots of the Black Bee-Eater (see last week's post on April 11, 2009: "How I Digiscoped the Black Bee-Eaters!"). All pictures of this bird were taken in Liberia (River Cess County) on January 5, 2007. The habitat was secondary forest edge bordering on "coastal savanna", 1 km southeast of the mouth of the Cess River.

The Black Bee-eater (Merops gularis) is found in the rain forest zone across equatorial Africa, but its status varies from scarce to locally common. An African migrant breeder, its numbers in Liberia are highest during the dry season (Nov-Apr). This first photo clearly shows the beautiful blue forehead and supercilium, characteristic of the nominate western race Merops gularis gularis which occurs from Sierra Leone to Nigeria. (The eastern race M. g. australis, from Cameroon to eastern Uganda, lacks this fieldmark.)

Many bee-eaters are gregarious, but the Black Bee-Eater is usually encountered only in pairs. In typical bee-eater style, however, it spends considerable time on the same prominent perch, watching for the occasional passing insect, which it then flies out to catch and (almost invariably) bring back to the same spot to consume! This rather predictable behavior (which tends to make any bee-eater a fairly good subject for digiscoping!) gave me lots of time to focus my scope and fumble with my camera settings, and then...

...when this Black Bee-eater flew off, I didn't have to change a thing! Only a moment later, it was back in my scope's field of view, ready for another shot!

One of my field guides says that the scarlet throat is sometimes hard to see in poor light! On this occasion I guess the light was more than adequate!

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DIGISCOPING NOTE: There seems to be some slight "vignetting" in this shot, with the corners of the photo, especially toward the right, appearing darker. This problem can sometimes occur in digiscoping if the camera lens and telescope eyepiece are not the ideal distance apart and/or are not perfectly aligned. Considering my crude camera-to-scope adapter (made from a large plastic bottle cap!), I'm just glad the vignetting was not any worse!