When we were out asparagussing we saw one olive grove with hanging bottle in the trees. I guess about one third of the trees had these bottles with what appeared to be clear liquid in them. I’ve been wondering why – and why only this one olive grove. I am thinking that it is either to attract bees to pollinate the trees or not to attract birds who eat the buds?
This time of year we hear hoopoes a lot. They have a very distinctive cry and do make a hoopoe type noise. One year we had one which must have been nesting nearby as he spent much of his time sat on the arial next door hoopooing.
We’ve had one this year too which sounded nearby – and needless to say, we now have one much closer in the form of Ludvig, who is doing hoopoo impersonations. We used to go out and see if we could see our neighbouring hoopoe, so I think Ludvig will be having a little chuckle to himself as he sends us out on wild goose (hoopoe?) hunts.
I made a bit of a mistake with Ludvigs learning as I thought I’d teach him a bit of Run DMC ‘walk this way’, but change the lyrics to ‘squawk this way’. So for a while he really embraced the ‘squawk’ – so we had a talking parrot who would sit on his perch and say ‘squawk’ like from a cartoon.
I was thinking about leaving the radio on for him if we’re out as he’s like a little sponge at the moment learning new things, however I’m not sure if he’d find the radio annoying. He does know how to get Google to play a tune, so perhaps I’ll work with him on learning how to stop it too, so he can turn it off if he wants. I had to unplug the google device as I’d be trying to concentrate on something only for Ludvig to suddenly switch it on and play a tune loudly and sometimes I couldn’t switch it off as it wouldn’t recognize my voice!