Lemony Life
The more common kind of weevil visiting the decaying lemon. A female I believe, sitting unusually tall but with thin front legs.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
I often observe her with her rear end touching the lemon’s surface. Depositing eggs I think. The lemon serves a multitude it seems.
That would make sense. Also, a weighty rear end is economically supported on the ground, and keeps the head up and alert.
Here she’s grazing. Then she makes the perfect subject, too absorbed to notice any disturbance I make in her landscape.
Then there’s mating, and those long male legs come in handy to maintain position and balance on an otherwise precarious lemony world.
An other kind of weevil, or babies frolicking on a young lemony world. It’s hard to say without interfering …
Where the lemon attached to the tree a fungus grows from within, and he loves it. … Notice his long legs now, broad at front, apparently oversized.
When the lemons in the house start turning I put them to use in the garden.
Staked on bamboo or otherwise, they age in the sun and rain and eventually attract these tiny weevils.
They graze on the cracking skin and any fungus or mold that grows on it, absorbed in the business of survival.
When they stop still it’s usually for a time, time enough to observe and for a few shots anyway.
But once they are on the move there is no hope, fast and agile as any fly in the garden.
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It’s in the nature of form to move. Trick is to be still enough to catch it before it’s gone.
Though it’s essence never really leaves, nature returns anew, is never the same again.
When seen with a steady focus, to be imbued with the creative spark of life.
Click – Life On A Lemon – for the original.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Nature's Place 
I really enjoy your fantastic photography and comments
That’s good, every drop (of enjoyment) counts.
Great series Mark, and great idea to recycle the lemons – weevils are wonderful aren’t they? Different species of weevils often sit on the rusty star pickets on our backyard fence, seemingly sunbaking and pondering life…I know I should resist being anthropomorphic, but it’s hard with these big-eyed beetles. Love your sensitive words.
Thanks Dee.
The little creatures have their lives too, as important as any to the whole.
I think the caution against anthropomorphizing is often a cover for indifference, so ‘they’ can go on plundering nature ‘business as usual’, or just exploiting it without having to regard other’s being. Otherwise why not, it helps to respect nature’s mobile creatures, which helps to respect ‘other’ people, and ultimately self – for what it is, not what we’d like it to be.
I suspect this is why in many cultures they have made totem of unlikely creatures, the ibis (bin chicken to the anglos) is sacred to the/some/many aboriginals, for instance. I mean, if you make a ibis sacred every other creature gains respect by comparison.
We could do with more respect for the seemingly insignificant in this world.
I totally agree…from now on when I post my sometimes anthropomorphizing words and photos on my facebook page (I’ve called it Rose Robin, after one of our beautiful winter visitors), I’ll think of your words…my aim has always been to encourage respect and love for the natural world and its sometimes tiny inhabitants so people will realise what we are losing every day with the clearing of Australian land wherever it happens.
Why not, thing is to not let the loudest or apparently rational/scientific voice rule. There is magic in our nature, it’s not just fact or fantasy.
Interesting take on recycling.
The weevils appreciate it. The birds in the morning enjoy a bit of crust. The possum is last years baby who nightly asks for a bite to eat. The ants will enjoy anything left over. The earth and everything in or of it is one big recycle machine.
The hump is interesting and doesn’t seem to have any function.
The drawing in the eye seems to vary depending on where the observer is standing.
The wings are under the hump, maybe not folded flat?
The eye pattern may also be to do with the flash, light reflecting on the structure within perhaps.
It’s amazing how few creatures are affected by flash, or light at night. But some, like the Doli fly, are sensitive to the pre-flash of TTL metering, and makes them one of the hardest flies to capture using flash.
The click sounds of the camera don’t seem to bother them either.