Bits ‘n’ Bobs
Little wasp having a feed of nectar. Hmmm … delicious.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again.
Wandering, in search of the greatest bounty. The next pot of nectar.
Insatiable … Well, not really. Enough nectar and they are away to do what else the little wasps do.
Sometimes they aren’t feeding, just standing there as if guarding the treasure while they digest the last meal. Perhaps …
Grandchester is a small village just up the road from Calvert, where I’m staying right now (west of Brisbane, QLD). Looking at google maps I could see a big dam named Railway Dam Reserve. An industrial dam perhaps. I went to have a look because insects and flowers gather at places of water in this dry country.
Turns out it has been out of use and drained for some time, with the dam floor cracked all about. The dam wall is about 10 meters high and any overflow would have come down it, splashing to the old rocks and creating a shaded oasis below and between the wall, the hills and the trees around.
I know the creatures loved it, because I love it. But it’s a ghost of what it was. All the same, where one thing dies another takes its place. Dams evolve … this one is a haven for some different plants and birds now.
I followed the bird, a wagtail, as she danced in the air catching her food, which brought me to one plant that stood out of the mass of green and blue around the protected edge of the dam. I don’t know the names but the small creatures soon became visible as I stood still enough long enough to see.
Small wasps, feeding on the pollen and nectar and oblivious of me as I cast my shadow to shade them from the sunlight and get a few shots with controlled flash.
The birds and insects in this place seemed unusually fearless, allowing me to get closer than has often been the case elsewhere.
A little pleasure to me …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
An Other Life …
Waiting in the darkness to come.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
She was in the way of my walking.
So up on my stick she did go.
To find a new home for her stalking.
… gardeners of an other kind, the web weaving kind.
Strung across the open spaces in the garden, orb weavers work.
To catch a meal on the wind, best caught out in the open, unencumbered by the green.
Down long tunnels of dark space through which many small creatures pass.
Night time, quiet time, death time. Influence cast afar.
In stillness, in the cold light of the full moon.
The stars stopped twinkling.
*
This post was scheduled days in advance so I was ready for a house sit on Thursday prior.
Something that was right, not wanted – a small discipline of self, you could say.
Turns out the old dogs are glad for a walk, as long as we avoid the bindi lawn.
The horses love a bit of fruit from a hand, though not all of the four are friendly.
There’s a gym, of sorts, so I can maintain my recently added exercise form.
And the area is dry and cold, so that fits too, to help keep mind in its place.
There’s also a place where little ones go, an old industrial dam …
Just follow the birds and there be the fruits.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Natural Thing
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
The eyes have it.
And the ears.
As I got out of the car I noticed movement in the grass about 20m away. As I looked to see what it was it stopped still and slowly sank to the ground as, I suspect, it registered eyes on it.
Water dragon, much like the last one only smaller, winter time thinner. But just as placid, made no move to run, no suggestion of attack. Up close s/he was positively relaxed.
Male or female, it doesn’t really matter to the sense of things. Only in consideration of other matters that really don’t matter here.
The fact is it is a wild, savage creature. Surviving on the edge of civilization and behaving with instinctive integrity, being.
All creatures have it, the absence of that self-consciousness that signifies ‘trouble’ in people – an emotional cunning.
It’s what attracts us to nature, the innocence, an honest engagement with natural intelligence in uncivilized form.
You always know where you stand with nature, no double think.
No thinking at all.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Wild Garden
Gripping the side of the leaf for safety, lest she fall down into the darkness below.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
It wouldn’t do, to be lost to the earth, this fine late blooming bee. She sensed something … could be male with that headdress.
Could it have been me she sensed, the dark shadow above, or the heat of my hand close by. Sensitive, sensible, little thing.
She took the hand was offered, climbed on and set out exploring. Not too cold at all here, on another warm living thing.
It seems a long time since the small creatures vanished from the garden this year. A sense of things to come perhaps.
In season, but fitting to the news from around the world of the disappearing insects, our disappearing nature.
So busy being clever we forgot to tend to nature with a little love, and our ignorance is coming back to us, inevitably.
Not unlike a boomerang thrown by a novice who somehow gets it right, and turns to an admiring audience to take a bow.
Whack … get it right next time, maybe. But no gloom here, there is function in the self inflicted …
*
It was on my mind to patrol the garden, maybe find a bee caught out in the recent cold. If I’m lucky.
And there she was … sitting on a leaf, waiting for the warm sun to shine on her in the shadows.
I lifted her up, and got a few shots along the way. She didn’t mind the heat of my hand.
Heat is life to a bee somehow living in the shadows of our winter.
When warmed enough she took to the wild airways.
Nature undaunted …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Nature's Place 
10 comments