Just read the article in Farm Collector (December 2017) about barbed wire fences and the bumblebee impaled head-first on a barb. I thought you would like to know how a thing like that could ever happen. In the summertime here, we have a small, dark, gray bird with a light gray breast, the Bee Martin. They spend a lot of their time sitting on roadside fences. As I grew older, I would watch them follow me when I would be on the road with a tractor. They would fly from fence post to fence post ahead of me. I would see grasshoppers and other bugs impaled on barbs. One day I actually saw one stick a grasshopper on a barb. Later I found out from my uncle that they catch the insects and put them on the barbs for a meal on another day. My mystery was solved.
Robert H. Klinkenberg, Tonganoxie, Kansas
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