In which he or she skree-ees.
Family of falcons who feasted on a pigeon all day around my house on Eighth near St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. I spent the whole day watching and taking photos and videos.
Raptors in the Garden District—up close and personal.
This is a tree at the edge of our driveway in front of the neighbor’s home in the Garden District (Our house is a traditional New Orleans shotgun, unlike the two Garden District mansions in the picture, and it belongs to someone else—we’ve just put our home in it for the time being). Likewise, bees have come and made a home in someone else’s tree. You can’t see them in this picture but you can see their home if you know what you’re looking for.
And here’s their hive. Hey, they’ve only been working on it for about nine months. I mean, I guess that’s their hive, huh? And, let me tell you: those guys work really, really hard. In and out all day. Buzz, buzz. Why they’re busy as, uhm, nevermind. But they are.
So, this is what their place, their assembly plant looks like most of the time. I took pictures of them early this summer (which are on my dead hard drive, sigh), and I took these pictures this Fall (with the new camera, about which I obviously have much to learn).
But the bees: they are all the time in and out, back and forth. Except—
Except for the one time I caught them doing this. All huddled up. Don’t know why. Secret life of bees and all that.
Are you as amazed as I? Don’t you wish you knew how many bees are in there? And do they take turns, rotating from outside to inside and back? If so, does the queen yell, “Bee basket turn over?
It reminds me of that thing that fire ants do in a flood: they all roll together in a tight ball and float, with the ones on bottom being sacrificed for the survival of the colony. Cottonmouths do a similar thing, but I guess they could do it and all keep their heads above water. I’m wildly guessing here. Anyway, those are two good reasons not to play around in the floodwaters, yikes.
But back to the bees and their not so secret life: aren’t they a trip? You should see them in the Spring in my cherry laurel blossoms.
One of a whole family of grasshoppers who spent most of the summer in my potted satsuma bush. Some ugly dop (and boy are they) caterpillars also dined on it, but I kept forgetting to take pictures of them, and then they disappeared.
And this is what most of the satsuma bush looks like after the grasshopper family (and the ugly dog caterpillars that I didn’t take photos of) got through with it. But I couldn’t begrudge any of them.
