Wednesday, June 12, 2013

busy like a bee

I know I've been slacking in posting, but I've been busy.

I'm getting a hive of bees very soon so I've been making room for them.  I kept bees as a youngster while growing up and decided it was time to get back in the bee biz.  Nothing commercial mind you, but just enough to make the bees and my yard and my neighbors yards a little bit happier.
It seems bees are in decline, so I'd like to do whatever I can to help them along.
No, this doesn't have a cotton pickin' thing to do with pinhole and I'm not making excuses for not posting, but yet I am.

Anyway, here's a pinhole I made just yesterday afternoon of the tree that the bee hive is going to live under.
It's a nice old Cedar and it will offer shade and some protection from the elements to my dear bees.


In other distractions, I'm often asked how I set my pinhole solargraph cameras out.  I mainly just use a small metal strip of "pipe tape", or "hanger iron" and then tape the small pinhole camera to that so I can put wood screws through the strip to mount it on a tree like in the photo below.

It works very well and keeps the camera steady for a long time!  I've had cameras mounted like this for 12 months, so if you tape the dickens out of it, it will remain in place.
The only problem I have had with these, is that Crows sometimes like to peck at them. If you can place yours in such a position that a Crow can't perch and get at it, you should be safe. 

My other distraction has been the baby birds fledging this time of year.  We just had a nest of 5 baby Mountain Blue birds take off for flight school!  I can hear them peeping in the trees to their parents in the mornings and late evenings.  They are so cute!

We also have several other nests of birds in the yard.
One is the "messy bird" that makes a hideous nest of old rabbit fur and pieces of animal hide.  I think it's a Thrush of some sort.  I haven't seen the momma long enough to get a good I.D. on her but here's the babies so far.  See that messy nest! Good grief!  I bet the babies grow fast so they can get the heck outta there!


And then there's the Nuthatch nest in the Bar-B-Q pit.  Yes, the BBQ pit!  We were going to make fajitas a week or so ago and discovered the nest, so no fajitas in the pit.  We had to grill them on our hibachi!
The momma Nuthatch climbs right down the smokestack to enter the pit and has the neat little nest made in the smoker box part of the pit.  Quite smart if you ask me.  But not so smart if we hadn't noticed it in time!  Anyway, here's a cute baby Nuthatch waiting for momma to come with big juicy bug.
Just look at that little mouth!


Now you are all caught up on what's been going on around here.  Hopefully I can get back in the pinhole saddle and post more photos in a day or two, but in the meantime, take it easy and enjoy your day!

1 comment:

  1. That cedar tree pinhole image is really nice, well done. And good for you for caring for the birds and the bees.

    I've been slacking in pinhole, need to get back at it soon.

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