{"id":13238,"date":"2012-06-15T13:39:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T11:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=13238"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:25:35","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:25:35","slug":"european-bee-eaters-at-lesbos-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/european-bee-eaters-at-lesbos-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"European Bee-eaters at Lesbos, Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

From 1 till 12 June I’ve spent a short vacation on the island of Lesbos, Greece. Best time to visit Lesbos is actually the first weeks of May, as many migrating birds can be observed during that period. But this was a vacation and not a birding trip. I’m sure I will go back again to watch spring migration at this beautiful island.<\/p>\n

One of the resident species is the European Bee-eater (Merops apiaster) Wonderful birds to observe their behaviour and their hunting skills. Despite their name, they are not eating only bees. I’ve seen them catching and eating bees, butterflies and beetles. They are able to spot a bee, or other insects, about 60 meters away. The nests are burrows dug into the ground or in earth cliffs. On Lesbos most nests I’ve seen directly into level ground. I was very happy to have the opportunity to photograph these colorful birds.<\/p>\n

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Flying with a Bee as Prey<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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Bee-eater with butterfly<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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Bee-eater catched a beetle<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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Nest of a Bee-eater couple<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From 1 till 12 June I’ve spent a short vacation on the island of Lesbos, Greece. Best time to visit Lesbos is actually the first weeks of May, as many migrating birds can be observed during that period. But this was a vacation and not a birding trip. I’m sure I will go back again […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":2192271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Bij-PB-4514.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[7761,457,456],"class_list":["post-13238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-bee-eater","tag-greece","tag-lesbos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}