Behaviour
The Purple-bearded Bee-eater undertakes seasonal movements, breeding inland in the dry season, and moving to the coast in the rainy season. Like other bee-eaters it nests in burrows up to 90 cm long tunnelled into the side of sandy river banks, cliffs and cuttings, but does not form colonies.
The Purple-bearded Bee-eater, again like its relatives, eats insects, including bees, wasps and dragonflies and beetles, which are caught in flight. This species hunts alone or in pairs, rather than in flocks, and sits on a favoured perch for long periods, twisting its head with its beard flattened or plumped, and wagging its tail back and forth before sallying after passing prey.
Read more about this topic: Purple-bearded Bee-eater
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
“The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, “immortal longings.””
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behaviour by his attitude towards the result of the behaviour arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)