That Time …
Fly time … drone fly.
Standing still in the shadows of the giant fern and on the edge of a leaf is a prospect, a possibility. Take the shot you can get.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
With one in the bag it’s time to move in and risk losing it, for a closer shot, at a better angle. And take the second shot you can get.
Confident he’s not going to fly away now, don’t strike anything sharply, rotate to the left and take the shot you want – a profile of a powerful proud stance, with detail in focus and good (enough) background.
Be bold, go get the hose and turn it to spray and risk it on the fly, indirectly. Taking time and moving slow, then move in for another shot you want – profile, some background, my finger underneath, and a few drops to liven the show.
Moving around again for a slightly different angle, you never know what you’ve got til you see it on the computer. … A sure sign the fly is comfortable, he starts preening. Wipe those hands …
Playing with a drop of water, taken from his face. It was worth the work for that shot, though it couldn’t be planned. … All work done in the wilds of the garden or local bush. Subjects presented by nature.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Elegant Visitor
If existence is a mirror what could this little beauty symbolise …
*Click on the pictures for a proper look …
This little beauty, feeding on another beauty. There is beauty in and behind this fly. It is seen …
… inside. This is a wonderful intricately designed living thing, god made. Just looking to see …
To think there could be the one without the other, the mechanical without the spirit behind …
The whole, of every thing, exists in the space I see it in. Could the space represent a greater reality?
Could it be that simple? Well, I’ll go with simple any day. Though it’s not easy.
Simple is focus on the sensation inside. See how easy that is …
Life comes in all shapes and colours, form. This Drone Fly is one of the more elegant ones. He only comes once a year, early summer, and stays a couple weeks.
I have to be in the garden waiting before he will show up, he only comes if I call him … believe that if you will. He is fearless among his kind.
His way of flying is particular, has a certain quality of control other flies don’t. Beautifully quiet and deliberate.
His colourful dress and sleek form mark him out, uncommon. Particular work goes into his making.
A messenger of high regard amongst the gods, and wears the badge aproud.
If you see him on your travels say hello, he might be there for you.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Elusive Beauty
*Click on pictures for a closer view …
Infrequent visitor to the butterfly bush, faster than most and hair trigger to a finger touching the flower he’s feeding on …
Unless he’s actually engaged, focussed, on eating. Contained. Then you have to be it, to get it, the shot. A matter of focus.
Never met a fly with mental issues – born of self reflection and the imperative to realise peace of mind.
Colourful, unpredictable little thing … wild elusive beauty.
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I am not what passes, and every-thing passes in time, becomes past.
Except for this time, now. Now is always now, it never passes, never changes.
What is always now is the space every thing passes in.
Seeing it is doing it, a guided mystery.
Of wild beauty being.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Droning On …
8 seems like a lot but I couldn’t leave out any more.
Tough little creatures these Hoppers, careful handling required.
The new Butterfly Bush, six of them, are coming along nicely. One has been flowering for a week and the scent is divine, the colours dark and rich. That’s to me, who knows what the little people see and smell. Probably the same in their way.
I got the plants early in the year off ebay, grown in Victoria, and put them straight in the ground a couple months ago, with space for them to expand, and they are all doing well. I’ll have to do a post on just the flowers, with their different and wonderful colours and scents they deserve it.
For now though I want to introduce you to the Drone Fly, lover of the flower’s nectar. A female I’m sure, with clearly separated eyes,who dropped by and surprised me one day as I was checking for infestations – I have been getting hoppers congregating and mating on new stems of the two golden flowered bushes and I don’t want them destroyed.
What I do is grasp two or three hoppers at a time, sidelong between thumb and forefinger, carefully as they have some microscopic thorny growth, and throw them away with any wind to ensure they don’t directly return. As I watch them disappear against the sky they take wing and change direction, like tiny helicopters, usually toward the big palm tree nearby. Then, a day or so after, I do it again …
It’s a necessary process to keep the plants healthy as they grow. I can’t use insecticide, that would be silly since I want to photograph bugs, unnecessarily criminal even. Well, it would be if we valued the little people as we should. I enjoy going around the garden anyway, and everything I do there is of value, in a sense.
We should value them because they do enormous work, but we don’t because we don’t see it, and that will cost us … If ever there was a case for the need of faith insects are it. Have faith they are necessary, even vital, and enjoy their presence that is often delightful, when time is taken to observe them at play.
Giving them space, not too much to the destroyers – our nature has been unbalanced by our interference, and anything else they need for their well-being, and they will entertain all day long without robbing the larder.
They love nothing better than to show off their colours, form and flying skills, and other not so unusual but often surprising behaviour …
Faith, all is as it should be … And if something needs changing, change it will – where there is willing, or not.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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On the Wild Side
That’s what I call the file I keep all my writing in, can’t remember where it came from now but I suspect it arose out of the fact I never really fit in to our civilised ways and that has never really changed – however I looked, or tried. Maybe it was just an element of self so ‘fuelled’ in the early days it became all encompassing and there was no undoing it, there just isn’t enough time, or will. Who determines such?
Something in me would just rather live and die in the desert, deserted of people and their demands of performance – whatever for. It’s an evolutionary impulse I know, this demand for improvement, but how to engage in the evolution of the human race when one is an alien to it, and alien by it? Perhaps alien is the evolution. :)
I look at the world of men and I see global insanity, the leaders and the led – on the whole and individually. And I see them heading for the abyss, not knowing what they are doing as they party on – business as usual. Nothing wrong with the abyss now, don’t get me wrong.
The only place I see otherwise is in nature or in being, being nothing. Nature has no self-delusive self-aggrandising agenda, and nothing is just that, the space behind and in which it all happens. And these two ‘places’ have no real attraction for the busy man or woman.
Regardless, I believe all is as it should be in order for it to change for the better, eventually – as all things must. And I do what I can to change it where it matters, in me first. The rest takes care of itself – until someone shows me different, and I see it.
There is surely no perfection in existence except it is as it is. The flaw in the jewel, or the jewel in the ‘flaw’?
And just keep going until the mirage turns to a waterhole. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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Nature's Place 
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