Eating venomous insects and other self-care tips for Blue-tailed bee-eaters

Wilpattu National Park

Fun Facts

Spend at least 10% of your day as a Blue-tailed bee-eater on self-care activities, which gives you a better chance of survival! These include sunbathing, dust-bathing and good ol’ fashioned water bathing. Catching those morning rays helps warm you up, which conserves energy in the annoying struggle to raise body temperature at night! It also helps flush out parasites in your feathers, so you can ‘nit-pick’ your troubles down to 0!

Trying to eat your daily venomous insect snack without getting seriously injured again? It’s so easy you can (read: have to) do it with your eyes closed! First, dash your snack on a branch, then close your eyes and rub it down to discharge the venom sac and stinger. It’s that easy!

Did you know?

Ancient Egyptians believed that bee-eaters contained medicinal properties, and used to prescribe the ‘ointment’ of bee-eater fat, as well as smoke from charred bee-eater legs!

Whereabouts

Blue-tailed bee-eaters usually forage in open habitats near freshwater as well as coasts, but they prefer to roost in tall trees inland, as well as in mangroves across the island. However, you are more likely to spot a Blue-tailed Bee-eater in Sri Lanka’s dry zone.