European Roller

Spectacular and distinctive: overall brilliant blue, with a rusty back and a stout, crowlike bill; juvenile plumage duller overall. Favors open and semiopen country with scattered trees and wooded patches; often takes larger insects, such as grasshoppers. Mostly seen singly or in small groups, perched on prominent perches, such as bare snags and wires, as well as on the ground. Quiet outside of the breeding season, when birds give harsh rasping calls.

The European Roller is not a native bird to Sri Lanka and therefore does not have a natural habitat there; if spotted in Sri Lanka, it would be considered a very rare vagrant, meaning an individual bird that has wandered far outside its typical range.

In Sri Lanka, a European Roller would primarily eat a diet consisting of large insects like beetles, grasshoppers, and crickets, small reptiles, frogs, and occasionally small rodents, as this is the typical diet for most roller species, with the hunting strategy of perching on a high point and swooping down to catch prey on the ground; however, European Rollers are not native to Sri Lanka and are unlikely to be found there, so their diet in the region would be irrelevant.