A little less of lockdown

It's all about the birds and the bees right now!
Now that I have your attention...
Literally, the birds and the bees. Over the last few weeks, we have seen a proliferation of birdlife around the two sugar water bottles, with avian visitors never seen before in the garden. Among the most exciting have been the Cape Batis which came inside for a visit and had to be caught and released before the cats pounced, the Sombre Greenbul (coming to a particular bush that has grown from a bird dropping and yet to be identified), a flock of mousebirds, an Amethyst sunbird (twice but very skittish and not easy to capture on camera) and a host of Malachite sunbirds in various stages of maturity, the ultimate being the brilliantly iridescent male putting on his spectacular courtship display. Of note have been a pair of Karoo prinias who seem keen to stay in the area. Among this visual overload was a constant flitting to and fro of the usual suspects - Cape white eyes, weavers, grey-headed and Cape sparrows, the irrepressibly cheerful Southern double-collared sunbirds, robins, Southern boubous, Common fiscal and currently a pair of Fiscal flycatchers. Let me not forget the raptors - Black sparrowhawks and a rock kestrel - and those pesky Pied crows ever on the lookout for a nestling to snatch from a treetop. Not all of these birds are interested in the sugar feeder, and in particular the Black sparrowhawks are attracted by the large flock of Speckled pigeons we feed, and the sunbirds are very happy to be sipping at the lips of the aloes at present.
And BAM!!! A bee arrived. Took one sip and called the swarm. Within hours every bird had disappeared, while the number of bees soared to levels never seen before. Great to know they are still around, but my interest lies in the birdlife. After a mass drowning in one bottle, we put a sponge in the feeder so that the bees couldn't get into the bottle, which resulted in a frenzy of apian (?) activity rather than avian, but still the birds didn't return. The feeders have been packed away and all is quiet in the garden. It will have to be the suet balls again to entice the seed eaters and omnivores, and the birds with a sweet tooth will have to go back to nature, hopefully nearby.