The European roller (Coracias garrulus) is the only member of the roller family of birds to breed in Europe. Its overall range extends into the Middle East, Central Asia and the Maghreb.
The European roller is found in a wide variety of habitats, avoiding only treeless plains. Nests usually in tree holes. It winters in Southern Africa - primarily in dry wooded savanna and bushy plains.
The European roller is a bird of warmer regions. The nominate subspecies breeds in northern Africa from Morocco to Tunisia, in southern and east-central Europe, and eastwards through northwestern Iran to southwestern Siberia. The subspecies C. g. semenowi breeds from Iraq and southern Iran east through Kashmir and southern Kazakhstan to Xinjiang. The European range was formerly more extensive, but there has been a long-term decline in the north and west, with extinction as a nesting bird in Sweden and Germany. The European roller is a long-distance migrant, wintering in Africa south of the Sahara in two distinct regions, from Senegal east to Cameroon and from Ethiopia west (with observations in the Degua Tembien mountains) to Congo and south to South Africa. Some populations migrate to Africa through India.
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