Sweet Bee
A Fire Tailed Resin Bee, lovely little thing. Found a few metres from the Mantis nest. It was slow moving and in an effort to get it to stop altogether I gave it my finger to rest on and warm up, it was overcast on a relatively cold day. As soon as it climbed on it started moving faster and in a few seconds was stretching its wings and away it went. So much for it stopping for a better shot.
A bee is a bee, until it’s not. But it never has a problem being a bee. A man is anything the wind blows along, until he’s not. And man can have a problem with being anything, because it’s not the truth. Anything at all, because existence is an alien place.
Man must come to the will to act without it being born of want or not want if he is to avoid more of the same, being without truth. The action carries the imprint of its birthing and imbues the consequences with it.
Or it could be the wind of change just blows through him, we’ll see. Or we won’t, because death is the whole point of living.
We’ll see, if there’s enough pain to change him.
Smile! You’re on candid … (:
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Ichneumon Wasp – Laying on Mantis
First picture is just for size perspective. The Wasp is 3-4mm long and the ovipositor is thrice as long, standing on a one inch diameter Mantis nest, a globular foamy thing you have probably seen before.
The Wasp is parasitizing the Mantis nest, or Ootheca, by first sensing with her ovipositor, smell or taste – just like us, there is something there to feed her young – every mother is concerned for the welfare of her young. The Ootheca is where the Mantis lays her eggs and they incubate. The wasp has another idea, instead of hunting something for her young to eat and building a nest she does it easy and lays in a ready made nest, the Mantis’s.
She was so occupied I was able to manipulate the grass she was on to get the shot; otherwise she would probably not have let me close. Most of these small creatures are single minded when it comes to fundaments such as eating, shelter and reproduction. And unlike people they don’t make a problem of it, don’t get emotional or worrisome. Just doing what it is moved to do or must, no spanner of thought in the works.
The Mantis nest is one inch in diameter and five feet up on a stem of grass in a field of grass and there is nothing to brace myself or the camera for a shot. This is what I use the stick for, amongst other things. But the first thing is to go still inside. Inside comes first, if I am still inside I am still outside – as much as possible. The value being I am not distracted by thoughts of anything but what matters to getting the shot. And what matters first is stability, of posture or platform, or focus – the inner then the outer. When I quiet my mind this way it also means I am less likely to get anxious or stressed in the often difficult process of capturing the image.
When I have stability of focus – as much as possible – I accommodate the fact there is no perfection standing in a field trying to hold a camera at the top of a five foot long stick absolutely geo-stationary – it’s not possible. This is where the minute but inevitable movement has to be controlled since it can’t be eliminated, even with short working distance and lens and bug relatively stabilized in the same hand, so I move the plane of focus – less than 1mm deep – through the plane of the subject at the angle I want to capture it and shoot just as I judge it is where I want it. And it is a judgment for me. With my gear it is sometimes like shooting in the dark but you can see from my pix it works, and the keeper rate is not bad.
And if this old body can do it with my cam any body can.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Golden Soldier Fly + 1 or 2
… angles I could get in the long grass. First time I’ve seen this fly and it sat for a while. One more wonder of the nature at our feet.
Hidden Jumping Spider seemed reluctant to make an appearance though it did peep once or twice.
And when I got back to the car this fly was dying on it. Magnificent creature.
One way or another death comes to us all.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Most Unusual View
Many times I have been shooting a fly that was rapidly rotating its head and every time missed it on the upturn. This time I saw it was rotating but left the fact out of my consideration re the shot and got it three times with one and six frames separating them. The originals look much better.
You’ve got to be a bit lucky. And surrender to the fact.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Fly by Four
Someone said “Great pix, but flies are disgusting.” Disgusting is in the mind, a self imposed, self perpetuating condition that prevents from seeing the objective reality of awe inspiring – universal – intelligence behind the form. Objective reality – having its being independent of the observer. How can one see what’s behind the form if one is hung up on an interpretation of the form.
One, you, can’t. To get behind the form, the fact, you’ve got to get down to the fact. By leaving the interpretation out of it. And the fact is of sense, which resolves to the pure inner sensation – meditation.
It’s an exercise and there is no other way but to do it. When you’ve had enough of being lost in the mind–ing.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Beauty Queen
She laid her eggs in a mud nest she built in the wooden ceiling. Stocked it with a paralysed spider and sealed it up. In some time a young wasp will come out of the mud tomb to do what mum has done. Repeat herself.
Everything repeats, so far. It’s the essence of existence, to repeat what has been.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Little Colour
The Bee sleeps and the Aphid may be wary, instinctively so. How else could it be since they are not burdened with thinking or emotion. Wary is not emotion, it is an instinctive response of the body to the sense of danger the presence of an appropriate sized creature represents. Appropriately sized for eating Aphids.
Bees don’t eat Aphids but Aphids don’t know it.
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Shiny green Katydid on the planet Frangipani with pink moon rising behind. Well, it could be a planet to an insect – the Frangipani tree. Didn’t stay still for long but long enough. Always enough even when the result is in the negative – no shot. What isn’t is imagination.
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Grasshopper eyeing up the Marigold. They eat the flowers with a hearty appetite, must be the delicate beauty they are imbibing.
All in the sense of it and not a thought in the way? The long form of death.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Assassin at Work
I spy an Assassin.
Wandering about in the forest.
Tracked ‘im up the grass plant to panic in the hive.
Stabbed a wasp and carried her away.
And away.
And just when Assassin thought it was safe to stop the ants joined in the kill.
So off Assassin went again and didn’t stop till ants were way behind and wasp was drained of life.
This way and that, a little lost at times it seemed.
But never let go the precious hard won meal.
Skewered Wasp.
And the Assassin lived happily ever after. Until …
But that’s another story.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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