Merops mentalis
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~50%
The blue-moustached bee-eater (Merops mentalis) is a species of bird in the family Meropidae, a group of brightly colored Palearctic and Afrotropical birds noted for feeding primarily on venomous Hymenoptera such as bees and wasps. The blue-moustached bee-eater is one of 31 species within this family. It is a small, dark bee-eater measuring about 19 cm in length. Both sexes are generally similar in appearance, with predominantly purplish-blue plumage, a rich chestnut mantle, back, and wings.
The species is native to the Upper Guinean forests, the Western High Plateau and Bioko, and occurs in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, where it inhabits submontane and upland rainforest habitats.
The blue-moustached bee-eater is typically found singly and is most often seen perched high in the forest canopy beside tracks or clearings. From these perches, it swoops down to capture small insects, such as butterflies, honeybees and other flying arthropods before returning to its original perch.
The genus Merops was introduced by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. The name... Wikipedia →
Call0:15
Ghana · 2022
© Peter Boesman · XC719290 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Begging call0:28
Nigeria · 2015
© Brian Cox · XC241435 · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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Ghana · 2024
© dbeadle · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Taï National Park | 🇨🇮 Ivory Coast |
More parks will be added in future updates.
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Blue-headed Bee-eater sighting in Taï National Park on a given day, based on 5 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 56th most-seen of the 74 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 50%, if each day is a fresh chance.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Blue-headed Bee-eater sightings with a recorded time, and about 7 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Taï National Park, in our data
Taï National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Blue-headed Bee-eater sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same order: Coraciiformes
The closest relatives of the Blue-headed Bee-eater that you can see in Taï National Park (order Coraciiformes, Rollers, Kingfishers, and Allies) are Woodland Kingfisher (about 30%), Blue-breasted Kingfisher (about 10%) and Malachite Kingfisher (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Blue-headed Bee-eater is recorded against all the birds logged in Taï National Park (5 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
