30 January 2024: Day 12, Livingstone, Zambia — Street Scholar Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click on right here to see (typically) the place I’m at present.

Bee-eaters and rollers are each members of the Order Coraciiformes that features kingfishers, motmots, and todies. All of them have colourful plumage, giant heads, brief necks, brief legs, and often syndactyly toes. In different phrases, two of their three pointing-forward toes (toes #3 and #4) are fused on the base.

Right here’s what syndactyly seems to be like on a European bee-eater and a lilac-breasted curler.

Birds on this Order even have a habits in frequent: They slam or thrash their prey onto exhausting surfaces to disarm or incapacitate them.

You’ve in all probability seen a kingfisher beat a fish to demise. Watch this southern carmine bee-eater (Merops nubicoides) slam a bee.

Rollers get their identify for his or her aerial acrobatic performances throughout courtship or territorial flights. They’re usually in the identical habitat as bee-eaters as a result of they each nest in mudbanks.

The lilac-breasted curler (Coracias caudatus) is each photographer’s dream. Not solely is he very colourful and as huge as a crow however he’s keen to perch prominently for a very long time.

Like different Coraciiformes they slam their meals, too.

(credit and hyperlinks are within the captions)