green bee eater

 One afternoon we sat in our balcony watching couple of green bee eaters. They would sit on one or two select spots on the Fire tree branches next our apartment building. Their heads were continuously turning left, right, up and down... looking for preys. Suddenly they would take off, fly swiftly in arcs and return only to do it again and again. After five or six attempts, one of them caught an insect.

Since they were hanging around, I decided to take pictures of them. By the time I got my camera, one of the birds had flown to another tree. These are few pictures of the bird which still remained on the Fire tree. It's shape changes significantly, when this bird relaxes it looks plump and when it stretches it looks lean.

I tried to get a shot when it was airborne but he bird was too swift. This is the moment when the bird aborted a takeoff. Its feathers remained spread for a second before it relaxed.

Its eyes must be capturing a hundred frames per second.. looking for preys and predators at the same time. The dark jutting streaks from its eyes look like eyeliner.

Looking straight into the lens.

The bird stretched to look over a branch or a leaf that was blocking its view. Notice the difference in size because of a small movement.

There are plenty of green bee eaters in this locality. Some times five or six of them perched together on a tree or cables. They usually takeoff one at a time, rarely seen them takeoff together,

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