King of Flies – Robber of Life
Burp!
At a small clearing in the forest the grass had grown long and green with the recent rains. Ideal breeding ground for some creatures, ideal hunting ground for others.
Large by the usual size of flies around here, this hunter reigned. It moved easily with grace, never seeming to falter in take-off, capture or landing. There was an efficiency about it, no unnecessary movement or sound, a consummate conservationist designed for stealth.
He sat high in the long untidy grass in wait for something to emerge from the dark shadows below. As soon as a suitable creature, unaware, was within reach up he went to capture with those long spiny legs – the better to grip with – and deliver the ‘coup de grace’ to the creature with a sharp and deadly lancet sheathed in its strong stubby proboscis, usually to somewhere behind the head, via a cocktail of neurotoxin and digestive enzymes that rapidly paralyse and consume.
Cranefly was the prey of incidence today, not too big and not too small, and available in abundance right now – it also has very long legs that help trap it in the hunters embrace, and it moves at a speed and pattern that was easy to track.
The Robber, or Assassin Fly – so called for the way it quickly and silently snatches the life from its prey – was well fed this day.
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It pays to be present to see what is now, and not occupied in the memory – which is then and a bridge to a robber of a different kind.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Li’l Bee
This fellow is about 4mm long and in the first few pix is collecting resin from a hole in a pine tree. I suspect it is for building material for the nest. There were more than one at the hole but as is often the case only one was at the right angle in the right place for long enough for a shot or two.
These are Australia’s native honey bee, known as sugarbag, and their honey is a luxury given their numbers and size – they don’t make it like the European honey bee that is twenty times its size and more active.
They don’t have a sting either so they are harmless by comparison, and they are too small for me to track back to the hive. That’s their advantage, too small to be threatened.
*
Science often tells us how nature is robotic, that the creatures and plant life are no more than the sum of their parts plus function on auto. And it’s true, except for the ‘no more’ bit.
The ‘more’ they are is the same ‘more’ you and I are. It’s the inscrutable intelligence behind the structure of everything.
The unknown, the mystery before knowing is, before you and me.
The mystery, the no-thing, the pre-existent wordlessness before it all begins, and ends. As it is now.
The wonder, the beauty, the colour and light.
The deep, the black, the abyss – inside.
Home.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Winter Bounty
Happy for a little honey in the dead of a Brisbane winter, is this Green Head Ant. Placed on a Chrysanthemum and left overnight near the nest for them to find. They are more usually meat eaters so it’s not unusual for them to ignore honey.
But it is winter here and the ant’s hunting grounds are a relatively bare cupboard, apart from the cat-got pigeon last week. Even so, there was only the one taking a measure of honey for the hive.
They can be seen patrolling the ramparts of the gardens wooden border throughout the day, or travelling along a grass or plant stem nearby, always in ones or two’s.
This one was available for few shots, graciously.
Ant came, found food, took it home.
A simple life.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Flower Power 2
Adds colour and contrast to the green or darkness, sometimes a scent, and feels silky smooth – mostly. And beauty, can’t forget the most important part, a little shimmering inside. This one is wonderfully yellow and it has stopping power, to stop an insect, or me, in its tracks.
Flowers feed the small creatures with pollen and nectar and are the precursor to what feeds you and me, fruits, seeds and things. Wonderful little things, flowers. And bugs.
In fact everything rests on the flowers and the bugs that tend them.
And they rest on the one primordial intelligence behind.
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The same intelligence that pervades and upholds all things.
Known and not, that we call God.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Colourful Life – A Resolution
Not the New Year’s kind. And not the photographic kind either.
Everything has resolution, of a kind and degree. Bugs have it, in that they can be ‘seen’ to one degree or another – and see or sense, depending on a few things. Such as outline, colour, camouflage or not, etc. In fact resolution is of sense, you could say that a thing can be resolved makes it so. And sense is of intelligence, what else. Intelligence as seperate from thought and emotion.
The kind of resolution I am looking at is of a sense that is only born through experience and realization. Experience without realization is doomed to repeat. Whereas realization, of the value of ‘the’ experience, should bring the need for ‘the’ experience to an end. Realization is of the new, or ‘now’ – that mystical moment. If it’s sharp, or resolved, enough.
That’s the key. Enough! For only enough, of whatever, is the end of anything, where there is realization that brings resolution – to change from what repeats.
Am I repeating myself? ((:
*
For anything, even a picture, to resolve enough there must the will, enough, behind it. And it can’t be forced.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Colourful Life – A Resolution <!–[if supportFields]> DATE \@ “d/MM/yyyy” <![endif]–>3/07/2010<!–[if supportFields]><![endif]–>
Not the New Year’s kind. And not the photographic kind either.
Everything has resolution, of a kind and degree. Bugs have it, in that they can be ‘seen’ to one degree or another – and see or sense, depending on a few things. Such as outline, colour, camouflage or not, etc. In fact resolution is of sense, you could say that a thing can be resolved makes it so. And sense is of intelligence, what else. Intelligence as seperate from thought and emotion.
The kind of resolution I am looking at is of a sense that is only born through experience and realization. Experience without realization is doomed to repeat. Whereas realization, of the value of ‘the’ experience, should bring the need for ‘the’ experience to an end. Realization is of the new, or ‘now’ – that mystical moment. If it’s sharp, or resolved, enough.
That’s the key. Enough! For only enough, of whatever, is the end of anything, where there is realization that brings resolution – to change from what repeats.
Am I repeating myself? ((:
*
For anything, even a picture, to resolve enough there must the will, enough, behind it. And it can’t be forced.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Fly on Mushroom – Yum!
With the afternoon sun streaming through the trees, and after a few days rain, the mushrooms had pushed their way through the settled soil and grass. Not a lot of them, but enough to notice. And some bugs noticed too.
This fellow had commandeered the cap of this one and was chasing any intruders off with a virtuosity, perfect flight control. It is a pleasure to watch such mastery of the wing at work and play.
Have you ever seen bugs at play? Have you noticed they do?
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Bugs are not the dumb creatures they are often taken for. They do have their own simple intelligence, according to their form and function. Not unlike us people. They sense, and in their way they know what they need to know.
Chase off that intruder. Need for a pee or a poo. Time to eat or sleep. And time to mate. And die, just like us.
And there is always that ‘something else’ that may emerge. A little creativity perhaps. A little god. Just like us.
In a flash of colour and form, or graceful dance. A little beauty.
Just like us.
*
Unlike us they don’t have or make a problem of any of it.
Intelligent little bugs.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Visitor to the Mantis Nest
The Mantis nest had a couple Earwig visitors ‘listening’ at the surface the other day. Or so it looked to me. The same nest the Ichneumon Wasp was parasitising. No rest for the prey here it seems.
They both took different positions and stopped as I watched, I got the impression they were ‘sensing’ for signs of life that might mean food. It’s odd to see two earwigs together at the top of a five foot stalk of grass. I suspect the wasp did the same in its way, sensing for signs of life – food for the young – with the ovipositor before planting her eggs.
Now what does that remind me of? Dinner time anyone?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Creatures of Divinity
While the appearance of insects is reduced in the fields and forests because of the cold, the cold sends a few to the light I leave on outside at night. So I get to see some creatures I wouldn’t otherwise.
It really is amazing the design of this beautiful existence, seen in the small natural things. Not by any ‘BIG’ Christian sort of God person but by the impersonal that is beyond the reach of thinking, reasoning, emotional Man. The impersonal that can be ‘seen’ when there is no one to go; ‘there’ it is. It just is, in all things, and out. That’s being, or being divine.
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As for being human, a pained, thinking, emotionally interpretive creature that concerns itself with trivia and dies slowly and uncomfortably over a long period of time?
Who, in their right mind, would want that? And when seen to be utterly futile how to turn it to purpose.
We’ll see, is all I can say.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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