During flight, feathers under its wings are orange-yellow. Under the sunlight, the bird is shining with luster. The blue-tailed bee-eaters are called a most beautiful bird by Chinese photographers.

Like other bee-eaters it predominantly eats insects, especially bees, wasps and hornets, which are caught in the air by sorties from an open perch. This species probably takes bees and dragonflies in roughly equal numbers.

The bird species mainly live in Southeast Asia, east China, and part of Yunnan. Included in the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species in 2013, the bee eater is also a species under state protection in China.

Reporting by Xiong Qiang and Yan Keren (Yunan Net); trans-editing by Wang Shixue