There are many varieties of bee-eater birds, ranging in size from six to fourteen inches. All have pretty feathers in various color combinations of bright red, yellow, blue, brown and purple. All of them have a black mask over the eyes. These unusual birds live in Mediterranean countries, Africa, Australia, India and other tropical areas. The European bee-eaters migrate south in the winter.
Bees, wasps and hornets make up 80% of the bee-eater’s diet, along with a few other insects. These are captured in the air. Even the young birds can do this without any lessons from their parents. Their food being caught this way explains why the Creator gave them long, pointed wings and swallow-like tails. These features enable them to fly swiftly and make quick turns in their flights, so that they rarely fail to capture their prey.
Another special feature about these birds is their long, pointed beaks. What purpose do these serve? If they only ate flying ants and termites, a short, wide beak like a swallow’s would do very well. But catching bees and wasps is another matter, since a sting in the mouth or throat would not only be painful with swelling, but would probably mean death to the bird. So God gave it a specially designed beak.
Overtaking a bee in mid-air, this bird skillfully catches the bee across its middle, holding it just tightly enough until the bird returns to its perch where it beats its captive against something solid to kill it. Then the pointed beak is carefully used to remove and discard the stinger and to squeeze out any remaining poison from the stinger end of the bee. Not until all this has been taken care of does it eat the bee or give it to its babies. Isn’t that an amazing feature of this bird!
We can easily believe that when God Himself created these pretty birds, He gave them their knowledge of how to capture and eat these poisonous insects safely. This instinct and skill has been inherited by each generation ever since. If they had had to learn on their own how to safely catch the bees, carefully kill them, skillfully remove the stingers and remaining poison, their mistakes would have caused their deaths, and the species would have died out.
ML-11/25/2012