Olive-backed Oriole Feeding Young

As I was sorting out the bees at the back of the lodge , life went on as usual everywhere else , On my coffee breaks sitting on the front verandah I could see a pair of Olive-backed Oriole feeding their nestling right in front of me . And a red headed finch building a nest a short distance away . I was able to get a shot of the Oriole but to busy to try to shoot the Finch .

The 2 Days with Bees

I spent 2 days getting rid of the hive and bees from the window ,,,, I had to unscrew the hinges from one of the shutters from the inside and push the bolts holding it in place out to let the shutter drop to the ground ,,, taking half the hive and a lot of bees with it . They were very angry little bees ,,, and came back in their thousands to protect the hive . I drilled holes through the window and squirted soapy water at them and put a blow heater on the inside of the glass to melt the wax to make it fall away ,,, with a lot of help from constant thumping with a hammer to jiggle it loose ... If only I had time to film it ,,, As it was a perfect safe way to shoots bees from inside and a laminated glass window between them and you . They had some interesting reactions to the impending break up of the wax . They all held together with their feet and made little line of bodies like safety ropes to hold it all together ,,,,,, But I had to keep going ,,, There was no way I was going to let them stay .
It took me two days to get it safe enough to get up on the tower and work next to what was left . I had to light a very smoky fire below and worked in continuous smoke to avoid being stung , There were quite a few still buzzing around , You just had to refrain from smacking them when they landed on your neck . I believe that if you acted scared and ran for it they would attack you .... any way it was a bit hard to run for it on a 3 meter ladder on top of a 6 meter tower .

The Bee War

After about 10 years of looking up at an unfinished building paper wall on the lodge I have finally set time to go down with a 6 meter Tower and extra ladders and finish the bushfire prone rear of the building . There was no freelance paid work around so I had a couple of weeks free to do the job .
I drove down and started to assemble the tower , which was a little slow with only one person .... I happened to notice that there were bees around the building , but didnt think to much of it as a close by Lilly Pilly was in full bloom and covered with bees . The next morning as I built the tower up I noticed that the bees were coming and going under the gap in the wooden shutters covering the windows ,,,,,, I quickly went inside and pulled back the curtain covering the building ,,,,,,,,,,, A complete Hive had being built between the shutter and the glass window ,,,,,,, AAAHHHHHHH . My Idea of getting the back looked like going up in smoke as I rang several bee keepers and was turned down when I mentioned that they were in a House not a tree or in the bush . To hard to remove ,,, and they were all going to some Bee Thing that weekend . I waited two days for some bee keepers to call back ... but it was the same answer ,,, To hard to busy . So armed with the knowledge that they hate soapy water and smoke makes them more docile I began the Bee War .

Change of Blog name

I have a whole lot of Photos and blurb to post up and will be doing so soon ,,, But I am going to change the Blog name so the Word birdhavenlodge will not have the comerong island attached to it ,,,,,,,, So the new address will be birdhavenlodge.blogspot.com ,,,,,,,,, The pages should be up at the end of this week ,,,,,, See and read about , The Bee War ,,,,,, and birds building nests and feeding their young. Plus other interesting stuff ,,, ,,, See Yah.

Wind Art

Birdhaven Lodge

photos

Spring Time at Birdhaven

On my last visit to" Birdhaven" on Comerong Island which is a 2 1/2 hour drive south of Sydney Spring had just started and the native orchids were in bloom and were most abundent on the walk down to Duck Creek through Moon Girls Fairy Glen ,,, see the Photos I have posted up .
I also did a walk down to the beach for sunrise and got a nice shot of the waves falling on the beach with a great cloud formation and orange sun framing them . Later when the tide was up high I also shot some close ups of shells and small things on the sand bubbling with water after the wave had receded ,,,,, small things that you tend to over look unless you take the time and stop and observe . See the shot I speak of here in later post , due to me not knowing how to put photos up the first try