Warbla

Warbla · Library

Rainbow Bee-eater

Merops ornatus · Family Meropidae

Merops ornatus

Family Meropidae

Order
Coraciiformes
Family
Meropidae
GBIF occurrence records
472,924
Countries and territories with records
10
Rainbow Bee-eater
JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) · Merops ornatus - Centenary Lakes.jpg · CC BY 3.0 · JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Recordings may be trimmed and re-encoded; photos are cropped and resized.

About this species

This species has 472,924 occurrence records from 10 countries and territories (GBIF, 21 October 2026). Most records come from Australia (97.6%) and Indonesia (1.1%); together they account for 98.8% of the total. In Australia, this species accounts for 0.42% of all bird records in GBIF.

The scientific name Merops ornatus combines the genus name Merops with the species epithet ornatus. The Warbla app catalog lists 27 species of the genus Merops; apart from this one, those with the most GBIF records are Merops apiaster, Merops orientalis and Merops philippinus.

The catalog has GBIF record counts for 30 species of the family Meropidae. This species ranks 3rd among them; the family’s most-recorded species is Merops apiaster. Its record count is 4.4 times the family average (107,640). The family Meropidae belongs to the order Coraciiformes, which has 171 species in the Warbla app catalog.

More birds in the family Meropidae

Credits & data sources