The prey of swallow-tailed kites includes a wide range of wildlife. The fork-tailed black-and-white raptors are known for catching and consuming green June beetles in flight and snatching lizards, tree frogs and rough green snakes from trees.

But it’s not as widely known that swallow-tailed kites will also nab wasp nests, snacking on the larvae in mid-air and sometimes carrying the protein-packed paper combs back to their nests to help feed chicks. (The birds’ thick-lined stomach helps when eating insects that sting.)

Empty wasp nests at the base of a kite nest tree on Townsend WMA (Andy Day/GaDNR)

This summer, DNR wildlife technician Andy Day snapped a shot of cleaned-out wasp nests clustered around the trunk of a kite nesting tree on Townsend Wildlife Management Area near Ludowici. “That’s about 10 times as many (nests) as I usually see,” Day wrote.

Hit and flap: Kites grab wasp nests, or vespiaries, on the fly. (Adobe Stock)

He has also found the nests of blue-gray gnatcatchers below kite roosts, evidence that the raptors prey on the young of smaller birds.

Swallow-tailed kites will eat bats, as well. And Day notes that a South American subspecies of swallow-taileds is even known to occasionally eat fruit – which seems a much-too-easy target for these acrobatic aerial predators.

Top: Swallow-tailed kite tracks a flying beetle (Brian Mitchell/Special to DNR)

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