One thing which makes Oran an interesting place to live is the contrast between the familiar and the exotic. You could apply this to many areas — language, society, the arts — but it also holds true in the natural world.
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been visited a few times by bees. They look like fairly ordinary honey bees, but they travel in a swarm and fill the entire yard with a buzzing mass, before deciding on a suitable perch. Here they are on a rose bush:
(Not on a honeycomb — this is a pure mass of bees).
Two of our more regular neighbours: a sparrow, and a hoopoe:
(This is probably as close as you want to get to a hoopoe: Wikipedia says that “The uropygial gland of the incubating and brooding female is quickly modified to produce a foul-smelling liquid, and the glands of nestlings do so as well. These secretions are rubbed into the plumage. The secretion, which smells like rotting meat, is thought to help deter predators … From the age of six days, nestlings can also direct streams of faeces at intruders, and will hiss at them in a snake-like fashion.”)
And finally, no need for comment, other than — a kestrel on a cactus:
Hoopoe looks lovely. Pity about its habits!