Bees in Chicory

European honey bee (Apis mellifera) in Chicory (Cichorium intybus) flower

I grow Common Chicory (Cichorium intybus) for my rabbit Bertie. There’s an awful lot of it, and it grows too fast to keep under control in summer when it becomes a prolific flowerer. The scapes grow several centimetres a day, and before you know it the raised beds are full of scraggly droopy stems with lovely blue flowers and almost no leaves.

European honey bee (Apis mellifera) in Chicory (Cichorium intybus) flower

The flowers attract members of the local European honey bee (Apis mellifera) colony, important pollinators of crops, garden plants (and weeds), and then I have a photo-op!

[Click on individual photos to embiggen].

Corella and Cypress

Little Corella (Cacatua sanguinea)

One of the houses in the neighbourhood has a pair of cypresses that bears fruit almost every year. If there is a bumper crop like the one that happened in 2011 (alas, no pix) the trees will, at some point in the nut-ripening cycle, attract an entire flock of Little Corellas (Cacatua sanguinea) which will then hang from the branches and leaves like strange, large, off-white/pinkish fruit. Said spectacle is frequently accompanied by noise and mess.