The roller is sometimes called a 'blue jay' for during flight it displays brilliant turquoise and blue patternings on its wings. It is often seen perched on the top of a pole or tree branch and when some moving insect or grasshopper catches its eye flies off to capture its prey and returns to the same site.
Several specimens were sent to Gould by his son, Dr John Henry Gould, (1830-1855) Assistant Surgeon in the East India Company, who served in the army with the 83rd Regiment, but who tragically died in Bombay of a fever when he was only twenty-four.
Gould condemned the enormous export of rollers' feathers. 'I may mention that between three or four hundred flat skins were shown to me on the 10th March, 1869, by a plumassier of Oxford Street, which, he said had just arrived from India, adding that these were only a continuance of former sendings, and that hundreds more would probably follow.' He added that 'it must be a source of regret to all right-minded persons... to learn that, under such a course of destruction, the annihilation of this beautiful bird is almost certain, unless a law be promulgated in India, similar to that which we may hope is about to be passed for the protection of some of our own birds.'
The roller is depicted lifesize.
DISTRIBUTION: Southern and southeastern Asia: from eastern Arabia through India to Assam, and south through to China and to Indochina and central Malaya. The birds shown are the subspecies Coracias benghalensis indica from the Indian peninsula south of latitude 20 N; also Sri Lanka