The search for the wild native bees

The search begins. Everyday, when I walk the dogs, I'm on the lookout for a native bee colony in the wild. The walk I take has plenty of habitat for them: dead trees, bush-land, log hollows. So I am always looking up and about in the hope that I will see one in all it's glory, out in the bush where it should be. There is just an extra layer of magic on something wild and untamed and untouched by humans, something so special and wild about something that is perfection in the natural world. Sure, I love my box hives, but they seem tainted somehow by me, and by the fact that I stare at them and fuss over them and talk to them and watch them, as if they are Truman (remember that film?). So here I will document my search. Today I didn't find a colony. I did, however, find an echidna (a-real-life-in-the-wild-untouched-by-human-hands-echidna ... and no I didn't touch it ..after staring at it for a while trying to hide itself from me and a curious dog, I left it to waddle on its merry way) and that was darn special anyway.