Spider Mates
A delicate operation, he delivering his seed while avoiding becoming a nourishing meal.
*Click pictures for closer view …
Daring fellow … perhaps instinctively balanced between survival and reproduction imperatives.
She, being relocated on a stick as too close to the orange tail resin bee hotels.
He is content in his own web, waiting on an unlucky visitor to the butterfly bush. Gotta keep his strength up.
St Andrews Cross spider they’re called. The big colourful female and the relatively small male.
She sits in her web unmoving, he approaches from the other side, the web a barrier and carrier, wary for his life.
Some spiders eat their suitors after mating, food for potential spiderlings, these are probably one of those. Nature is savagely practical.
They reside in different parts of the garden, within their own webs, sitting without anxiety for what may be. No thought for any past or future.
Some spiders must die of hunger this way, become food for another predator, or travel for food and a mate, as they do, fearlessly though no doubt instinctively cautious.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Anomaly …
After the feast of butterflies, butterfly scales evident, appetite filled and unmoving for a while.
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Along came a weevil, looking to sup on the butterfly bush nectar, the spider ignored.
Perhaps oblivious to the nature of the spider, weevil went exploring under her.
Or could that be a baby spider … I don’t think so. :-)
After the butterflies came and went this spider was seen with evidence of eating them, butterfly scales around its face.
Along came a weevil the spider ignored, perhaps no longer hungry enough to move. Or weevils don’t taste good to a spider.
I don’t think the spider thinks the weevil is its baby, or the weevil thinks the spider is its mother.
Just one of those things that happen in nature, apparent anomaly.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Silk Traveller
Running to and fro around the dried orange on a stake in the garden. Inspecting for what, who knows.
*Click on the pictures for a better view …
Raising his abdomen into the air he casts his sticky thread, adventuring into the unknown …
Not once into the darkness, but more. What could be his criteria satisfied … does it feel right?
Then at the other end he rests, how long for who knows … Not long, work still to be done.
There are many ways creatures get around, walking, flying, hopping etc. These spiders use silk.
He climbs to the highest point on his map and casts a thread of silk into the dark night, in his search for food and a mate.
First he thoroughly inspects his platform, running around with no apparent purpose, then raises his abdomen into the air and spins a sticky thread.
Taken on the light breeze, there’s always some movement of air, it lands where it will and off he goes to investigate.
Where he ends up there’s no telling, he leaves and returns along the thread and casts again.
After a while he seems satisfied his destination is reached, for now, and rests a while.
But the threads are still in place, if he needs to return, and to mark where he’s been.
Diligent little thing, never tiring in his purpose.
Way to go …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Butterfly Ball
*Click the pictures, for the simple pleasure … then click (some) again.
The Caper Whites were the most numerous by far. It was their migration.
And so many other kinds showed up alongside them, like this Skipper, and others.
Jacaranda is raining across the country.
They came in their millions, these butterfly guys.
Dressed in white, red, blue and … on.
Dancing across the garden, supping as they went.
In waves, one week then two, they filled the air.
Some said it was an accident of the wind they came.
There was no food where they go. A terrible waste.
As with the Jacaranda flowering, right across the country.
I saw a dusting of the world by the magical, celebration earth.
It was east they danced and whirled, to the mystery.
Not west to the mapped mechanical.
There’s a world of difference.
Inside, that inner sense.
Of significance …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Cicada Day
*Click on the pictures …
Having just left the car on my way into the bush I stopped to have a look at a nearby tree and out of the wind a cicada landed on me.
Opportunity, gotta make the most of it, some things only happen once and they’re gone.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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