Hoopoe

I saw a lot of interesting birds in the past couple of days: common quails, Egyptian nightjars, blue-cheeked bee-eaters, European bee-eaters, the usual smattering of passerine migrants (such as this pretty isabelline shrike I managed to photograph) and even an unidentified sandgrouse (probably a spotted sandgrouse Pterocles senegallus). But I had the most fun watching a relatively common bird: a hoopoe foraging for beetles.

The hoopoe is one of the few absolutely unmistakable birds. It looks like a black-and-white butterfly in flight, its crest can be deployed at will, and its call is a distinctive, loud "hoop-hoop-hoop-hoop" (or "hood-hood," as the Arabic name transcribes it). This hoopoe was busy hunting for small, smooth brown beetles that tend to spend the day in burrows. The hoopoe would get them by hammering away at burrows with its beak until the beetles were exposed. Sometimes, the burrow was straight enough that the hoopoe would look down it, insert its beak and extract a hapless beetle. When opening burrows, the hoopoe used its beak just like a pickaxe - an impression that was reinforced by the pickaxe shape of the beak, head and crest. While I watched the hoopoe, it ate at least six of those little brown beetles. The little gray moths are largely gone now, but even if they were still around they probably wouldn't provide nearly as much energy as a few of these plump-looking beetles.