A bee-eater described in a Malaysian regional profile, where it occurs around sandy coasts, riverbanks, and farmland. It catches flying insects in the air.
Adults are mainly blue-green, with a black eye stripe and blue rump and tail. The sexes look much alike; juveniles have a bluer-green crown and back and lack the elongated central tail feathers.
Researchers studied Blue-tailed Bee-eaters at six nesting sites in Haikou, Hainan, China, from 2017 to 2022. The birds excavate their own burrows in sand walls. Vegetated walls were hard to use, bare vertical walls created nest sites, and wind and rain gradually loosened abandoned sand.
Unpredictable digging during the breeding season sometimes destroyed nests, eggs, or chicks. The study compared untouched sites, sites with ongoing extraction, and sites where digging was managed before breeding. The number of breeding birds increased over the study period at the managed sites.
At managed sites, people shaped the sand walls with shovels in March, before breeding began. The study recorded when and how the walls were prepared and compared how birds used them.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Across six Haikou sites from 2017 to 2022, breeding Blue-tailed Bee-eaters increased at places where sand walls were shaped before nesting began. The study also compared sites with irregular digging during breeding and untouched sites.