This green bird is marked by a blue throat and long tail streamers. It watches from a perch and catches flying insects in the air.
Adults have a brown head, blue throat, and green body, with long feathers extending from the middle of the tail.
A 15-year study followed Blue-throated Bee-eaters at a sandy floodplain in Jiangxi, China. In 2011–2012, 33 of 35 nests were inside a pine plantation. From 2013 onward, 75 of 79 nests were in open ground beside the plantation. Researchers monitored burrows and population size at the site from 2010 to 2024.
In 2018, researchers found an attempted burrow blocked by lateral pine roots aged five to six years. The study's maximum-adult count also declined from 2012 to 2024. The authors linked the nesting shift and local decline to changes in the sandy nesting ground, while noting the study was limited to one population.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
At one sandy floodplain in Jiangxi, researchers recorded 142 burrows from 2010 to 2024. Nesting shifted from the pine plantation to adjacent open ground, and lateral roots blocked an attempted burrow in 2018. The annual maximum count of adults declined from 2012 to 2024. The authors recommend protecting large sandy floodplains, excluding farming and development from nesting areas, and creating stable sandy banks where burrows can be dug. Their observations came from one local population.