Wooyung – Spring ’11
It’s a quiet place in N Eastern NSW, right next to Billinudgel NP, off the beaten track. There is a caravan park next to the beach where there is always a welcome from Chris and Lutz. I stayed in the caravan park from where it was a short walk to the beach with the continuous ebb and flow of the ocean surf, and dangerous rip currents – not usually for swimming in. And literally across the road to the BNP where I found the creatures for the pix in this post.
At night the only sound was the surf breaking up on the sand, and the only light the stars in the sky. I’ll be going back. It was a lovely quiet natureful place and I trust it is still there in the future. Out of the way places like this that aren’t very far from amenities are not easy to find.
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It rained for a day or two but that only meant I had to do things differently on those days, shooting in the shelter of the open garage with things arranged for the simplicity of process.
Simplicity, has a nice ring to it.
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This Cricket (to me) was awake early and was attracted to the warmth of my hand so it was a constant game to keep it in view without my fingers getting in the way. Though, as you can see, I gave in eventually.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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A Wave of Wasps
One recent day I noticed all these Ichneumon wasps about. They were flying around checking dark spots on the wood and anything upright. I have seen them before doing this, once, and what happened was the wasp turned round and lowered her pointed end into the darkness and ‘I suppose’ laid an egg, having found something in the darkness to lay it on.
They can smell or otherwise sense with the tip of their tail, very useful that, to a wasp. And it’s not really a tail, it’s an ovipositor, or egg depositor down which she delivers her eggs to a suitable place for growth and development – survival.
That’s what they do when laying time comes, the egg is laid on another creatures laying, such as a grub, and lives and grows on that. Nature doing what it doe, one thing living off another.
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Humans do it too, but they’ve gone mad and feed off each other now. Those movies about people going mad with a rage virus are a metaphor for the truth that seems hidden from most. It’s been happening ever since self reflection caused instinct to warp into emotional self interest.
The way we are. It takes every moments effort to keep that emotion from taking control, as it has with most people. But there’s nothing else worthwhile doing, so …
Into the breach, and see what comes my way …
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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A Jewel of Harlequins
On the white flowered Hibiscus in the nearby bush is a small herd of bugs, Harlequins they are called, don’t know why – possibly for the distinctive symmetrical markings on the ‘face’. These ones are real beauties; they go through many different colours in their little lives, blues, greens and reds. And there are times when they can be found with developing wings that make them look like something from a futuristic car show, and very elegant.
Anyway, these last days they are this wonderful blue with hues and patches of green and red and iridescent, overlaid on a very purposeful looking form. A very attractive little jewel of the forest.
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You have to know where to find them as they don’t appear on all Hibiscus plants, only a few I know of. And then you have to know how to handle them, with care of course. But they also respond to a kind of attention so it’s possible to get a few shots without disturbing them unduly.
And when they are done sitting I put then back exactly where I find them. This one is on my stick, the one I use for stabilising the camera at times is also good for shooting on.
I am usually in the nature just for a walk these days as the little people are shy or just not around after the drastic weather of the last year, and health permitting – other bugs I am catching are from visiting children, no fun at all, the bugs caught this way.
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It’s a simple pleasure of mine, this walking and seeing or sensing. To see the colours and form, the movement and the life in it all.
And then I go home, to tend the wildy garden I have encouraged and nurtured.
Just for a while now.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Dry Time
The long year of rain that washed the bugs away has been followed by a long season of dry, and few bugs are emerging that I can find, not even the Ticks. I had anticipated something of the sort with my gardening work, lots of seeds sown and plants watered with a compost area for bugs to eat and congregate in. The Possum likes the fruit as well. So it’s not all void of creatures to enjoy, albeit tiny creatures mostly.
Even so, everywhere I go there are maturing well fed spiders. It looks like food a plenty but could be a survival strategy, get a net up to catch what you can while there is any catching to be done. But we’ll see how things unfold.
What is coming can be predicted in the big picture, more or less, but the details are unknowable in their timing and context. That wonderful unknown.
There is nothing wrong with there being so few bugs, it’s just different. Last year they were so plentiful at the same times there are few or none this year.
The weather is very different this year, wetter, colder, windier and dryer at different times. And still nature is what it is behind, unmade, of a greater power than man, waving in time.
The one grace of existence, the unmade shining through.
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And here are a couple pix anyway. What a little wonder. And no sign of hunger. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Petals of Pearl
I’ve been seeding the garden with all sorts for a year or so, not knowing what may grow, and every now and then a little wonder appears through the overgrowth. This one has been budding for about a week and finally opened yesterday, some – half of the petals anyway. And today it opened up completely to the spring sunshine.
It’s a little beauty and I’ve been working it to see what happens, image-wise. That’s one of the things I love about nature and photography, I never know exactly how a shot is going to picture – there’s the shot and then there’s the picture produced. And I don’t want to know.
A wonderfully creative way to spend a few minutes, or hours, in sense. To see what a flower looks like and is. The creases and shadows on the white that give it its texture, the shape of the petals that give them their magical quality. And the yellow, heart of the flower, giving up to the prince of light – the Sun.
Yellow face I’ll call it, in a halo of pearly white.
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It doesn’t have to ‘make’ sense, only to be it.
Whatever that means.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Ready or Not …
… Keep your place or you’ll be caught! It was a game we played as kids, hide and seek if I remember right. And I went on playing it for decades after, in one form or another.
Now I don’t play any more, because I’m not so inclined, and you’ll have to go back and close your eyes to count some more. That’s what the seeker used to do, count up to a number and shout out – Ready or Not …
Have you ever seen any bugs play this game? Of course it’s not the same, they don’t count, not like us anyway. But they do play, why not. Why would a living creature, however small, be excluded from play.
Just look at the design, the colours. So much ingenuity and no play, absurd. And when they are in action it can plainly be seen they enjoy life.
That’s what I see, it’s the way it is, until it is some other way.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Perfectly Queen … of the Bees
It was a few weeks ago now that she showed up on the morning rounds of my little nature. There were still some of the little people/creatures to be found in the fields and woods as the winter, such as it is here, hadn’t yet taken a firm hold. Grass was still growing and leaves hadn’t fallen, not much of either. An in-between time you could say, not yet too cold for long enough to drive everything to death or shelter.
The field of long grasses was beginning to dry out with few of nature’s flowers, man’s weeds, still blooming here and there. Little yellow and red striped bells of beauty to me, shining here and there at the tops of the now yellowing threads of the earth’s summer blanket. Calling out to the remaining little people, come to me, here I am, just for you my love. Drink deep and live a little longer in my cold Elysian field.
And there, down the tracks of the season’s comings and goings, I saw a sign of wonder and mystery. A solitary queen, of queens, sitting in the shadows of the morning sun. Drinking the shine as it rose on the dew, warming to a new day to which there were now so few. My little queen, ‘tis you.
So I went to her, and with a passion new, tended her rising ‘til she had awoken true. From this way and that I saw she was fine and I, labouring in the rising sun, a little heady on just the scent of her wine. My, my, what a lovely so new. The form and the colours a blessing of Thine.
Then, inevitably she woke and I stood back to hear what she spoke. A tinkling sound to the ear of the round, a way of the listening, and the speaking, not often found. And what was it she said that touched me so, was it something you hear now that I can no longer know, or keep.
It’s that same sound, of the blackness, the silence so deep!
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Snake in the Grass
I was out walking through the tall dry grass one recent sunny day and was about to put my foot down when I caught a sense of something out of place – made me stop dead.
A shape that only one creature I know makes, a long and perfect double S. It was obviously a snake from the go but the oddest thing is it didn’t move when I nearly trod on it.
I stopped mid-stride and pulled back slowly and tested with my stick, an indispensable tool. When I was satisfied it wasn’t going to strike I got closer for a rare look at a snake in the wild.
It still didn’t move and I saw its eye was glazing over, a little milky, a sign of death long over. Inspecting it closely from head to ‘foot’ I could see what happened, why it died on this spot.
Its tail was wrapped in a dried out stalk of the long grass that grows here. The grass and tail were intertwined the way you see snakes mating on tv, sometimes, and it looked like the snake was trying to pull away.
But instead of untwining as snakes can, this one tried to pull straight off the grass and the grass cut into its tail, down to the bone, tighter and tighter the more the snake struggled.
And that’s how it died, struggling to live. Held firmly to the spot by a thread of grass wound tight around its tail.
Strange that the snake would have been caught so easily but that’s nature, you can’t take nature for granted.
It was a perfect death anyway. And a perfect life.
Who’s to say otherwise?
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Kooki Kool
Recently a family of Kookaburra’s moved into the neighbourhood, maybe driven by the extraordinary weather and lack of food in their usual habitat. There have been so few insects in the local wild places, as I noted in other posts.
At first they were laughing a lot, as Kooki’s do, and hanging out for a feed. Wherever I went in the garden there they would be, looking at me, sometimes laughing, sometimes ‘asking’ for food – in their way. One day all three came to the balcony and sat for a few pictures, a pleasure for me.
Fresh meat is their thing and with no insects it was mince from my dear and generous neighbour’s fridge, of course I paid my share. Then, after a while, they settled into the area and didn’t ask for food so much. I think they must have found someone nearby to feed them regularly, good for them.
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There is something magical about birds. In the fact of things, wherever you go there you will find a bird. They are everywhere and they see everything, at least more than anything else on the planet. I believe they are known in various cultures as the messengers of the Gods and I can see why, amongst all the creatures they so obviously fly. Magical indeed.
It’s not just in the fact of things that they are respected and even revered, for their form and function, colour and song, their beauty. But in the truth of things, what is behind the fact, they are the ‘messages’ of the Gods. Their forms – of fact – the bringers of that message.
When it happens to you, you will know what the message is, because it is already in you. The sound and sight of a bird will point to it. The thing is not to ignore it since it is from the ‘gods’ and serves the greater purpose of life on earth.
To wake up, to the being of a sunbeam, from the dream of past and future that is the human mind today.
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Walking in the woods the last few days I have been touched by many of our little friends, some yellow backs flashing as they passed swiftly by, some crimson heads bobbing around the bush in front, the royal blue of the long tailed tit, and such high pitched songs that were often bordering on the range of hearing, and all the usual characters heard and sighted in the shadows of the green, coming and going, to me and away.
All in concert, a single song, of the love of where I come from.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Nature's Place 
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