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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Butterfly Bush …
… and visitors.
I haven’t seen a Butterfly on the bush yet but there are plenty of other creatures enjoying the bounty of fragrant nectar.
The Crab or Ambush spider is unusually plentiful but elusive with so much flowering to hide away in at the sense of touch of a finger to the branch – I usually hold the creatures platform, resting lens tip on same hand to optimise image sharpness.
They are not big enough yet to tackle the Honey bee that is a frequent visitor, as is the Blue Banded Bee. The former doesn’t stop longer than a couple seconds, the latter even less. I am lucky to get some feeding bee shots at all.
It would take different equipment than I have to get feeding Blue Banded Bee shots, or the perfect alignment of some unlikely circumstances, shooting at a working distance of 4 inches and less and only seeing what’s in the frame through the LCD – time lapsed.
I take what I can get, or accept what I am given, maintaining equilibrium in the face of inducement to ‘try’ for more. As if nature is teasing me with a view of a desirable composition of behaviour only to whisk it away in the blink of an eye, again and again.
Such anticipation, the conflict between structured desire and what is calmly attainable, is a fundamental pain. An unacceptable disturbance to peace of mind that is best negated as quick as possible, eventually, by practise.
In the end, the end of finding out what doesn’t work, for me – what I don’t want, nature or life presents and I receive with a final single motion of the press of a button. Relaxed is the focus.
To take a single step in the right direction, against the pressure of mind, to capture a masterpiece of nature.
What I do is present pictures of that, images of the masterpiece nature is.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Damaged Butterfly
She seems to be having trouble with her proboscis, it has some form of growth on it and she was agitated, preoccupied and disinclined to fly far. So it was easy for me to get up close. She struggled with her condition for a while but never really lost her essential integrity, never sank below being what she is. Lucky butterfly.
Lucky because she didn’t have to know the emotion and attendant thinking ‘human’ nature would normally generate in a similar situation. A curse you could say. Or you could say a challenge, to climb, you could. But never mind, all is as it is without mind to darken it.
Beautiful, damaged, butterfly.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Surprise Surprise
Usually I can’t get near these before they are fluttering away but I looked down and there it was, a butterfly, still pumping up its wings. It was only just born a butterfly and must have climbed up on the blade of grass that gave it some isolation while it fully came to its butterfly form. So I said hello and took her picture. She didn’t mind.
While I was doing that a Jumping spider came along and performed for us. Turning this way and that, a little dance of nature to entertain while the hard work of cramping down for the shot was undertaken. It’s ok to say of a spider : Sweet little thing. Delightful character. Wonderful nature.
Evidence of its recent moth meal in the scales on its ‘fur’, here and there.
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It’s no coincidence what appears as nature since it is my nature appearing. The order of things is from inside to ‘outside’. So when a butterfly shows up where none should be I take notice and allow the simple acknowledgment of what it is symbolic of, new form, new life.
Let it be.
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For two days the same kind of butterfly has been under the outside light, just sitting there. And now it’s gone. I suspect a hungry Gecko got it, judging from the disturbance beneath its last position – flowers and holders upturned.
What does that symbolise then?
Everything has its time.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Out Of Time
It seems there is little time for writing these days. It’s not as if I am particularly busy – though it seems that way, except for editing the book and mounting and matting photos for selling, and walking in nature capturing images of all sorts of creatures. It’s more that what occupies me, making a go of the photo business, leaves little room for it lately. But it’s an exercise, isn’t it.
I have been finding some unusual creatures lately, unusual for me. But I want to do them justice, justice to their unique qualities, which all creatures have, but some more than others, to me, for now. :)
Here’s a few to be getting on with though. Each a magnificent expression of the intelligence of life on Earth. Each, however seemingly insignificant, essential to the whole. As it is with all things that be.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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