Food for a kingfisher and a bee-eater

“While surveying birds at Tuas recently, Sham and I had a few good observations. In nice sunny weather, birds were quite active. With the help of my lumix, I managed to snap some nice shots. This included two common, pretty birds feeding.

“One was the White-throated Kingfisher (Halcyon smyrnensis), a common resident of open country, feeding on a Garden Supple Skink (Lygosoma bowringii). The skink is a common, short-legged, worm-like reptile of gardens and parks. The kingfisher caught the skink and flew onto a chain, where it then proceeded to manoeuvre and swallowed the unfortunate lizard, while it was still alive. This was done within 20-30 seconds.

“The other was a Blue-tailed Bee-eater (Merops philippinus), a common migratory bird throughout Singapore, with a Decorative Tiger (Ictinogomphus decoratus) dragonfly. This dragonfly is a common, impressive species found around large and small bodies of water around our country. Despite the fairly large prey item, the bee-eater bashed the dragonfly and tried to swallow it. It then decided that a few more “whacks” were required. That was followed by the swallowing act that took only a few seconds.

“Always nice to be able to capture photos of bird behaviour, despite the limitations of my equipment.”

Subaraj Rajathurai
12th December 2008