This is Bird Note.

If you've ever been stung, you'll agree that it's wise to respect wasps and bees.

Watch stinging insects with a keen eye, but from a safe distance.

Birds like summer tannagers also watch bees and wasps with a keen eye.

But that's because they plan to eat them.

The summer tannager snatches bees and wasps in midair, as they buzz about.

Bug in beak, the bird flies to a perch, slams the insect against a branch until it's dead,

then wipes it against the branch to remove the stinger before eating it.

Wasp larvae are also featured on the summer tannagers menu.

After chasing off or killing the adult wasps attending a nest, a tannager tears open the

delicate paper like structure and devours the larvae within.

While stinging insects are a central part of their diet, tannagers also hunt grasshoppers,

beetles, dragonflies, and spiders.

Fruits and berries become important in their diet in late summer during migration and

where they winter in central and south America.

But when the birds return each spring to their breeding range in the southeast, lower midwest

and southwest, bees and wasps once again face their nemesis in the summer tannager.

For birdnode, I'm Michael Stein.