Plague Warrior
Sitting still a while, scoping out her territory. Danger as well as opportunity presents.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
Her favourite diet is ant, large black ones that climb endlessly up and down the power pole.
Alert to the shading of her by my rig, she inspects it from afar – afar to a 1cm long jumping spider.
She lives much of her life in the open on a 10m tall pole that was once a tree, in sunshine or shade.
Wherever the best chance of survival presents, there she’ll be. Chasing down her food, avoiding trouble as she can.
On the thick green power pole by the water treatment plant a warrior does live.
Her daily habit is to patrol up and down, for big ants to eat, while avoiding the tiny ones.
The big ants can be bitten but the small evade her and are tenacious when they get a grip.
She could see the tiny ones coming, in their rapid and erratic apparently aimless runaround.
And was careful to avoid them, jumping this way and that in her effort to stay ahead of trouble.
Trouble, what comes to everybody some time until we learn its nature and get ahead of it.
The natural things have advantage, they don’t confuse the fact with thinking or emotion.
Spiders don’t do it (think) instinctively, never consciously.
And the impossible is always a possibility.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Nature's Place 
Good readinng
Thanks …
When we slow down, we see more of our tiny neighbors. Nice job.
Indeed we do. Thanks Nancy.
I think these are all pretty fantastic but I really like the two head on shots. I always have difficulty getting good exposure with black insects but you have managed it very well.
Thanks David. Proper diffusion is critical to avoid blown specular highlights and underexposed shadows.
The insects know a lot.
I am currently watching the fruit flies trying to lay their eggs in the brood cells of wild bees, such as the horned mason bee, just in the evening.
They risk entering the tube, may well lay an egg quickly, come out quickly to make sure, and then quickly go back to lay more.
The bees apparently know nothing of the danger of the fruit flies laying eggs, otherwise they would chase them away. The much smaller fruit flies obviously know about the danger of being detected and are very, very hesitant.
They are intelligent in their confines, of sense and form. A bee’s eyes (or antennae) probably don’t detect the detail required to ‘see’ what the fruit fly does, to know the danger they are, just that they are there and not a bee.
It may be universal, the smaller you are the more wary you are (of being killed).
how beautiful!
Indeed …
Brilliant, Mark. Thank you for the philosophy lesson too.
Thanks Tracy.