Some Death and Life

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Look at the German Yellowjackets at work. People often call them meat bees as the love to bring back carrion to their hives.
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As for the poor bird, it has a yellow belly and is quite small, perhaps its a warbler of some kind. Either way the wasps are loving it.

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Now for a strange looking house sparrow.
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It appears to be a fledgling with leucistic feathers. Now it just needs to find a mate with the same features and we'll have white sparrows flying around everywhere.
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Now for loads of normal sparrow photos. This clumbsy fledgling was trying to perch on a vine.

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Here is a house sparrow hanging out on a church sign, probably pooping it up.
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He called over his girlfriend to help cover the sign lol.

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These two just discovered a crashed ufo. Perhaps it holds the secrets to the meaning of sparrow life?

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The doves are laughing at the sparrows. Surely they know that is just a new human surface to cover with poop. That is the meaning of dove life, cover the world in poop.



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Not in my yard yellowjackets 😎 a black bear dug up a yellow jacket nest in my yard last week. I read that they love the larvae. The hole exposed some roots of a big (older) tree so I covered the hole up. And yes got stung for my effort. The bear came back the next night and dug it up again. So I stupidly but carefully covered it back up.

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(Edited)

Ouch their stings are brutal, I know because I threw a dirt clod at one of their nests and got stung 8 times. I thought it would be easy to outrun them as a kid. I bet the bear considers them spicy.

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Gnarly! I've never seen any kind of paper wasps do that here. Ours are predators but they hunt insects. Then of course we have large numbers of spider hunters. Your post reminded me to go and spray the large paper wasps starting to nest right outside my front and back doors. They are pretty territorial and I am highly allergic

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I've never seen what sort of nest the German yellowjackets make, I sort of envision a horrible nest made out of carrion. I perfer having mud wasps around compared to paper wasps they are way more docile.

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Me too: our mud wasps will only sting if you sit or stand on them or something like that. It seems the German yellowjackets make a standard yellow jacket nest of layers of combs that they enclose in a large ball if necessary but they also nest in cavities in the ground, ew. Our paper wasps don't make enclosures, I guess they value ventilation in our hot climate

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(Edited)

Hornets and wasps eat my apples too….. is a yellow jacket a hornet or a wasp ?

🐝 🐝 🐝 ….hornet, wasp, bee emoji

I have to be careful when I’m picking up my fallen Apples.

I found this …

Yellow Jackets

Definition Of Yellow Jacket

Yellow jackets all belong to the genera Vespula and Dolichovespula. Like many wasps, they belong to the family Vespidae.

All yellow jackets are eusocial, which means they live in colonies. They build nests in trees, in the ground, on man-made structures, or other protected areas.

Yellow jackets may be yellow and black or white and black.

Yellow jackets are often referred to as “Wasps” because they are all in the family Vespidae.

Common Species Of Yellow Jackets:

German wasp
European yellowjackets
The common wasp
Bald-faced hornets. Turns out, these were misnamed years ago. Bald-faced hornets aren’t hornets at all but a white-and-black species of yellow jacket. Because they are white and black, they are usually not considered a yellow jacket.

Hornet

Hornets are insects in the genus Vespa. They are eusocial, which means they build colonies. They are the largest of all the types of wasps.

Most species of hornets come from Europe and Asia.

Common Species Of Hornets:

European Hornet. Originally from Europe and introduced into the United States in the 1840s, this is the only true hornet that lives in North America. Many North American species that were once believed to be hornets, such as the bald-faced hornet, are actually yellow jackets.
Asian Giant Hornet, (or “Murder Hornet.”) These were found in the Northwest United States in 2019. They are considered to be one of the largest species of wasp in the world, measuring around 2.5 inches. They specialize in killing and eating entire honeybee colonies to feed their hornet larvae.

Bonus Fact: Origin Of The Word “Wasp”

Here are a few interesting facts to note about the words “Wasp” and “Vespidae”:

Vespidae

Vespidae comes from the Latin word “vespa”
Vespa in Latin means “wasp”
Wasp

“Wasp” in English comes from an Old English word that developed from German
“Wespe” is German for wasp, pronounced VEH-spuh, or vespa

The German word for wasp “wespe” (VEH-spuh) comes from the Latin word for wasp, “vespa.”
Conclusion: Vespidae is a good name for the wasp family since it literally means “wasp”

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Source: https://fox-pest.com/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-wasps-hornets-and-yellow-jackets/#:~:text=The%20term%20“wasp”%20also%20includes,are%20all%20considered%20“Wasps.”

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There are way too many species of wasps out there. The stripes on the back seemed to look like a german wasp but it could be some other strange wasp, either way they are fiesty and crave meat.

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