We had a wonderful outing at Hessarghatta today…16 of us…but this post is about something I’ve seen for the very first time.

I was watching an

ASHY DRONGO

eating a bee in the Banyan tree:

(don’t ask me why, then, it cannot be called a Bee-eater)

when I realized that high up within the branches, there was a Rock Bee hive, and something very interesting was going on.

We know of many animals (bears, cf. the subject-title above), ants, buzzards (indeed there is an Oriental Honey Buzzard) who love honey, but I suddenly spotted a squirrel slowly going over the hive, looking for honey!

We all watched the squirrel for a while, wondering why it was not getting stung badly; there seemed to be no bees around, even though the hive did not look abandoned, but was quite fresh.

This was the first time I’ve seen an Oriental Honey Squirrel! I wish he’d broken off some honeycombs and thrown them down to us, too…

The photos from our outing are on Facebook albums are

here