INNcoming!

[Morticia]

Yes.bees are becoming endangered (especially honey bees). My sister just emailed me regarding her honey bee problem. They own a vacation cabin in the N. GA mountains and just came back after doing some spring planting. They have a very active honey bee hive in one wall. They got an estimate of $600 to have the bees removed then THEY will have to remove the damaged area and repair it. I replied to her to contact an area honey bee farm.
Now I have another 'problem' which I origionally thought was cute! We now have a 'pet' blue jay. The bird taps on my side door all day long. The door is a full length glass paned french door. We can not understand why it has chosen to make this a daily habit. It sits on the trim of the glass, looking in for a few minutes then starts fluttering upward, tapping on the glass several times. Then it lands on the gardina bush beside the porch before starting the process again for about 30 minutes leaves for a while then here he is again - 3-4 times a day. This has been happening for over a week now!.

oh! don't get me started on bluejays! i actually had one peck my head when i got under the tree where a nest was. and the audobon society was not at all sympathetic. warned me that it is a federal offense to harrass birds. hey, the bird started it! and i didn't want to harrass the bird, i just wanted it not to attack me or my elderly golden retriever. the lady at the society told me to wear a hat and put one on the dog! what a riot. my old dog would go outside in a big hurry with a toy helmet tied around her head. and then rush back inside as quick as her old legs would take her. wish i had a picture!
anyway, i believe the bird is seeing its reflection in your windows and is trying to scare it away. if you want it to stop you have to put something on the outside of the windows so it doesn't see the reflection. or a hawk decal or something. good luck!
p.s. the audobon society used to have a recording of helpful hints, call them and you may still hear their recording 'if you have birds nesting in your plants, press one', if you have birds pecking at your windows, press two' etc. but they didn't have one for birds attacking your head so i had to leave a message.

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We had a grackle. It got down the chimney into the woodstove in the spring. I heard something and the dog kept staring at the stove. I got hubs as I am really afraid of birds in the house and I thought it was a bat (yes, I do know that bats are not birds). He tried getting it back outside by dismantling the stovepipe from the outside (lovely creosote-y mess on the porch) but it wouldn't go backwards back up the chimney, even tho we figured it could see daylight with the stovepipe opened up.
Finally had to close all the doors in the house so it couldn't get too far, lock up the dog and the cat and let it out the woodstove door. It flew around the room a couple of times, got stuck behind the bookcase and hubs poked at it with a golf club hoping it would hop on the golf club and let him carry it outside.
Finally it flew out onto the screened porch and then outside. Hubs reassembled the stovepipe just in time for the bird to fly back down the chimney. The second time the bird flew out of the stove, out onto the porch and out the door. The THIRD time it tapped on the glass door of the woodstove and then flew right out the open door, no flapping around in the house or on the porch.
It came back the next day and did the tapping on the glass thing again, and we let it out. And that was the end of it. THAT year.
It came back the next spring, flew right down the chimney and tapped immediately on the door to get out. And flew right out the door. It was like a game or something.
We never covered the chimney pipe and it came back one more time. I called hubs at work, 'It's baaaaaaaaaaack.' No way I would let it out on my own so it sat in there with the dog watching it, tapping all afternoon until hubs got home.
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We had a similar experience with a squirrel in a chimney one winter when we lived in upstate New York. We had no stove door to get it out, though, and it ended very badly for the squirrel. When DH went to change the furnace filters the following fall, he opened the furnace to find a dry-roasted squirrel stuck there. Freaked him right out.
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We had a similar experience with a squirrel in a chimney one winter when we lived in upstate New York. We had no stove door to get it out, though, and it ended very badly for the squirrel. When DH went to change the furnace filters the following fall, he opened the furnace to find a dry-roasted squirrel stuck there. Freaked him right out.

That's a fairly common occurence from what I've heard...little bones in the furnace.
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No bones - whole squirrel. Flat and kind of crunchy. He used my kitchen tongs to retrieve it and then wondered why I had to buy new ones.
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No bones - whole squirrel. Flat and kind of crunchy. He used my kitchen tongs to retrieve it and then wondered why I had to buy new ones.

STOP! You guys make me think of the novel Pet Cemetary... ha ha
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No bones - whole squirrel. Flat and kind of crunchy. He used my kitchen tongs to retrieve it and then wondered why I had to buy new ones.

STOP! You guys make me think of the novel Pet Cemetary... ha ha

Remember where I live...
It's hard for me to drive thru the fog here without thinking of the pines closing in on me and wondering what lurks there...

 

[Samster]

Look at it this way...you don't have the giant Palmetto bugs that we have down here in the South. Ick, ick, ick....
I fight them all the time except the coldest months!

 

[Samster]

We vacuumed the bees up with the leaf blower. I was raking and all of a sudden there were bees everywhere! Big, juicy bumblebees. I would have left them alone but they were right by the entry door. Hubs got out the leaf blower and reversed it so it was a leaf vacuum and sucked the bees up. I haven't gone back over to that patch again but I did want to plant a rose bush there this year.
That's the most bumblebees I've ever seen in one spot! We usually only have 2-3 of them..

My normally stoic DH has one fear - bees. He was waiting for me when I came back from running errands yesterday with a fly swatter, informing me that he couldn't go down in the basement until I killed the bee that had got in down there. He was doing outside work yesterday and claims he hasn't seen so many bees before in a long time. He could be exaggerating, though.
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We have the big carpenter or borer bees now. We have a hole in a chair on the front porch and some holes in our privacy fence. Thank you very much, Mr. Bee and your cousins.

 

[Morticia]

We vacuumed the bees up with the leaf blower. I was raking and all of a sudden there were bees everywhere! Big, juicy bumblebees. I would have left them alone but they were right by the entry door. Hubs got out the leaf blower and reversed it so it was a leaf vacuum and sucked the bees up. I haven't gone back over to that patch again but I did want to plant a rose bush there this year.
That's the most bumblebees I've ever seen in one spot! We usually only have 2-3 of them..

My normally stoic DH has one fear - bees. He was waiting for me when I came back from running errands yesterday with a fly swatter, informing me that he couldn't go down in the basement until I killed the bee that had got in down there. He was doing outside work yesterday and claims he hasn't seen so many bees before in a long time. He could be exaggerating, though.
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We have the big carpenter or borer bees now. We have a hole in a chair on the front porch and some holes in our privacy fence. Thank you very much, Mr. Bee and your cousins.
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We have the big carpenter or borer bees now. We have a hole in a chair on the front porch and some holes in our privacy fence. Thank you very much, Mr. Bee and your cousins.

Holy cow, those things are HUGE. They were all over the place at your friends' house. Egads. And everyone was standing around like it was nothing.