Monkey Capers

Yesterday morning, I was sitting down to breakfast when I heard a commotion outside. On investigating, I was first just aware of a silhouetted largish figure sitting on the trellis at the side of my balcony. This turned out to be a vervet monkey demolishing a peanut bird feeder that I’d had hanging there for months, and helping itself to the goodies within. He was clearly unperturbed by my presence at the window (and occasional opening and closing of the balcony door to try to scare it off), as on finishing the peanuts (there weren’t that many left), it moved on to the dish of millet and sunflower seeds. All the while this was taking place, two pied crows were making quite a ruckus. They clearly weren’t at all impressed by this behavior (or perhaps just his presence), and made that even more clear by effectively dive-bombing the monkey. Between the flash on my camera and the crows, the monkey realized that this wasn't perhaps such a good place to be after all (or maybe he preferred a quieter breakfast environment?), and eventually leapt off the balcony into the tree. Not that the crows gave him any respite there. He eventually leapt on to the apartment roof. Needless to say, I’ve now removed all bird food from the balcony for the time being at least. There’s a big deal made in the UK (where I bought the peanut bird feeder) about bird feeders being squirrel-proof, but I've not seen one yet that makes any mention of monkeys!!!!