Cassia & The Bumble Bees

There is a fabulous pink cassia tree on the street on which I live, and this year it bore magnificent pink flowers profusely for weeks. Every morning as I had my daily walk, I passed under this tree, and for several weeks it was buzzing … literally.

I know the sound too well and thought there must have been a hive somewhere in the tree, but I could never see one. The buzzing continued. Then I realized that it was hundreds of bumble bees feeding on the nectar of the cassia flowers. The canopy was thick with bumble bees for weeks.

Now, they’re all gone. There are still flowers on the tree, but I guess they are past the stage that appeals to the bees. I’ve lived on this street for thirteen years, and never noticed this before. Perhaps the weather conditions this year were right for producing a proliferation of flowers that attracted bees from all over the island. Kinda cool!

If you’d like to read more about Barbados, please visit my other blog, Things Barbados.

Where Do the Birds Go In a Storm?

We are anticipating the arrival of Tropical Storm Bertha later today (Friday) - the breeze has dropped completely (read “disappeared”) and it’s all very quiet and still. So my question is where do the birds and other creatures go?

A few birds are tweeting and one or two might fly by as I sit outside on my deck, but where will they go for shelter? I know that they know where is the safe place to be, because things in nature know that instinctively, but I want to know too.

Living on a small island like Barbados they can’t exactly just fly to another island that’s outside of the range of the storm. Insects and frogs and lizards will just hunker down under rocks and in cracks and crevices that provide shelter. The monkeys probably go into caves and places like that. But where do the birds go? I shall keep watch this afternoon to see if I notice anything that offers a clue.

Update - TS Bertha missed us, so I still don’t know the answer.

If you’d like to read more about Barbados, please visit my other blog, Things Barbados.