Ug, I'm getting a backlog of blogging and I'm leaving for another festival tomorrow...prepare for a blogging explosion next week. I was supposed to go out and get to dividing Olga into a second beehive, but was WAY too distracted by birds. There were six, count 'em six, indigo buntings on Mr. Neil's feeders--among all the rose-breasted grosbeaks. Not to mention yellow-rumped warblers jockeying for position on the suet feeder. I was trying desperately to concentrate and focus on bees, not digiscoping birds. I went to the garage to the bee equipment shelves.

I heard a rustling and then looked up. There on the top shelf was a male Baltimore oriole. How can I focus on bees when the birds are forcing me to watch them? I opened up the garage doors figuring that he would fly out. Instead, he ran behind the equipment and hid.

Yo, dude, that's not the best hiding spot. The oriole eventually came out from hiding, but instead of flying out the wide open doors, kept flying into closed windows. I took one of the nets from one of our bee hats and tossed it on the not so bright oriole and grabbed it.

Boy, that bander's grip does come in handy. I gave him a look over and he was fiesty--that was good, he didn't hit the windows too hard. He had bent the tip of his beak a tiny bit, but was otherwise okay. He started whistling in my hand--man, could you feel the power of that song--that's a lotta whistle coming from a tiny bird.

I gave him to Lorraine to release and he was off. He preened a bit, roused, and then flew down to the grape jelly. A side door was open on the garage, so he must have flown in that way, probably going after what few insects are out and about.