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  Profile

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  In flight

Tropical Birds

European Roller

Coracias garrulus

• legendary
• 92 km/h
• Least Concern

Performs tumbling courtship dives that gave the family its name. Turquoise courier with theater training.

Population

~188,000–395,000 mature individuals globally (BirdLife International's 2019 global roller assessment, built from a 2015 European regional estimate of 75,000–158,000 mature individuals extrapolated at ~40% global range share; decreasing trend, 5–20% over three generations in Europe)

Habitat

Warm, dry, open country with scattered trees — oak and pine woodland edges, farmland, orchards, and river valleys; breeds in cavities in sand banks, walls, large trees, and houses (occasionally nest boxes); winters in dry wooded savanna and bushy plains in sub-Saharan Africa

Fun fact

European Roller nestlings defend themselves by vomiting a foul-smelling orange liquid onto their own plumage to deter predators -- the odor also serves as an alarm cue that alerts parent birds the nest has been disturbed.

Range

Breeds from northwestern Africa and southern/east-central Europe through Turkey and northwestern Iran to southwestern Siberia (C. g. garrulus), plus a separate subspecies C. g. semenowi from Iraq/Iran through Central Asia to northwestern China; a long-distance full migrant wintering in Africa south of the Sahara

Diet

Mainly large insects — adults favor beetles; nestlings are fed mostly Orthoptera (grasshoppers, bush crickets); also takes small lizards, frogs, rodents, small birds, and other invertebrates (Cornell Birds of the World broadens the adult diet slightly beyond BirdLife/Wikipedia's insect-focused description, but this is elaboration, not a conflict)

Size

0.305 m

Wingspan

0.55 m

Lifespan

9 years