Kakum, Ghana
June 2011

The Black Bee-eater is distributed in Africa either side of the Equator from Senegal to western Uganda and northern Angola. It is found on the edges of forest including gallery forest in the savanna where it usually perches fairly high up.

It is mainly black with a blue rump, conspicuous in flight as in photo 3, blue belly and undertail coverts, scarlet throat and blue streaks on a black breast. The nominate race, seen here, also has a blue supercilium which is lacking in the other sub-species M. g. australis.