The Oriental honey buzzard is also known as the crested honey buzzard, and the Asian and Eastern honey buzzard. There are six subspecies and we saw Pernis ptilorhynchus ruficollis which is found in India and Sri Lanka to Myanmar, Vietnam and southwest China. They primarily eat the larvae of bees and wasps extracted from honey combs. Special adaptations that help them in this endeavor are an elongated head for foraging on underground nests and a groove in the tongue which helps them extract wasp grubs from their comb cells.
The male has a blue-gray head with a brown iris and the female's head is brown with a yellow iris.
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| Male P. p. ruficollis illustration from Birds of the World. |
It winters in the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia and spends the summer in Siberia, Korea and Japan. We saw a female in December 2024 in Kaziranga NP in Assam, India.
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| Range from Birds of the World. |
Another bird with amazing range. Wow. And love the name--reminiscent of John and honey badgers.
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