Pilgrimage
Dusty trail, overflowing with green, damp humid in the tropical spring shade. Big dark ants crossing. I stopped to see what they were doing and it was the obvious, going somewhere. There were two kinds of ant here, big and small. The big ones had a certain character about them, a quiet strength. The smaller ones a quiet study.
In nature everything’s either going somewhere, doing something or doing nothing – being what it is – or just being.
Grasshopper is about too, about the house. A shy one this morning, trying to hide behind the green pole. Maybe his skittishness had something to do with its dented eye, the other one. I got him anyway. And there will be more. A season’s come. To go. Whatever that means.
Dragon’s flight is easy and unpredictable, predictably so. I followed him around the edge of the field, in and out of the bushes, to dam’s end. And off I went into the forest, to home, whatever that means. :) Home James!
Spider was hiding out on top of a flower, purple blue. She moved about at intervals, showing herself a patience, no thought. Sitting in silence, little spider being. Being spider.
An unusual bug climbed out of the forest of grass at my feet. I have never seen her kind before, soft, light and unthreatening nature. She wandered about the blades of tall grass, a rolling gait, and I showed her about a few twigs.
A little wonder of the day. All going home. A pilgrimage indeed.
And a flower or two to mark the way.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Spider Time
As soon as the weather started turning warm again I noticed an increase in the flying population. Small creatures to start with, then some bigger ones, gnats, midges etc. then bees, wasps, beetles and still getting bigger. Dragonflies have started their first wave of the new year in earnest; there are many young ones about where there is water.
Water, life to all things. Without the movement the fluidity of water enables there would be a lot of very slow things in existence.
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It wasn’t long before the spiders started showing themselves. Sometimes just as a speck on a thread hanging from the branches or ceilings. Often on the leaves where the little flyers landed. Now they are big enough to get noticed all about. As it is with all things, following the resources for survival, the population burgeons and gets fat on the bounty.
There is a cost too. You will often see a spider with a leg or two missing. Everything costs something.
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They have favoured places, spiders, depending on their kind. Or so it seems. Some love to weave their webs across the canyons of green and shadow and need a flow through of air to carry their prey to them, or they set up their webs in sheltered places and wait for other creatures that seek out the shelter. Some hunt in open spaces for their keen eyesight, like the big eyed Jumper, and others take to the jungle for their sensitivity of touch and the network of threads they lay around a place to feel from, like the spiky Lynx.
It only takes a little time observing nature to realise there is an intelligence to the way of things. All things have a place, even if it kills them. Because it’s the way of things.
Everything dies, and it fits.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Mother Fly
She was a beauty, about ¾ inch long, lovely colour and undamaged by her eventful life, no dents in her eyes or broken hairs on her face. In fact she was the picture of health, as I know a fly can be.
This huge fly found its way into the laundry the other day. It was on the window glass and I couldn’t induce it to have some honey and slow down. It had other things on its consciousness, demanding its attention.
I followed it around for a while trying to get a decent shot of it, even moving. Eventually I decided to trap it in glass and that worked. After a few minutes under the glass it stopped still, so I lifted the glass and it remained calm. It climbed up the side of the glass and sat there for a while.
After a short time it tried to fly away and fell to the window sill, buzzing around on its back, wings beating loudly against the surface. I remember big flies doing this from when I was younger, much so.
I noticed its behind was white and I took shots of what was presented to me. When I looked on the LCD I could see tiny grubs and it clicked. It was a she and she was giving birth.
There were many, maybe 100, of these grubs scattered around the buzzing mother. It appears the fly goes a little manic with the readiness of birth which causes her to scatter her young. That would be better than to leave them all in one place, a ready meal ensuring an end to her line, not very evolutionary that.
Then, a little time later, she died.
And that’s the way of it here.
*
Unless you know purpose and can live it.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Gi’s A Break!
Blue and red, green iridescence. Long legged wonder. Meandering about on Hibiscus, looking for his lost love? I bet.
He’s a man after all, why else all the colour but to attract his long lost love back to him.
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Stopping here and there for a drink, a feed. And what comes along but a bloody photographer.
Messing with my space, just ignore him, he’ll go away. I hope.
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Aaghhh! He won’t go away, I’ll have to perform now, bloody men.
Ok. Pose, this way and that. Stick my long tongue out at him, maybe he’ll get the message.
Aaghhh! He doesn’t get it. Just leave me alone, why don’t ya.
I know, I’ll show him my behind. He’s got to get that?
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Not on your life. Might as well play along.
Better clean up, brush the dust off my back, the debris off my eyes. Brush those antennae shiny.
Better look my best, give him my best. Then he’ll go away and leave me alone to get on with my hunt for my long lost love.
Did I say that? Putting thoughts into my mind he is. Dangerous man.
*
Hey you! Gis a break why don’t ya.
What? Now he’s putting things in my way, trying to slow me down. I’ll show him.
Oops! That hurt, all the way from his eye to his foot.
Me wings aren’t straight yet. Under the leaves then.
Aaghhh! Here he is again, won’t he ever leave me alone? Aaaaghhh!
*
Ok, ok. I give up. I’ll just sit here ‘til you’re done.
Ho hum!
*
And what’s this? A little lake of honey?
Wow, cheers mate. Come again any time why don’t ya.
Hmmmm! Ol’ pal.
*
Do insects really have such personalities?
Is it possible? Could the planet survive it?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Tumble in the Jungle
I was in Mt Cotton scout camp today and the most extraordinary event occurred.
There is a small garden there where the Joey’s planted some flowers and shrubs. It is bordered by a few timbers and as is their way the ants use them as a highway through the debris that litters the ground.
Today while I was looking for what I might find in the way of creatures – structure and beauty to shoot I saw these two ants going at each other. They didn’t seem too serious but I suspect they were well matched and that’s the only reason one of them didn’t die in the fight.
They tumbled this way and that, mandible locked to mandible, up and down the natural landscape. For ages it seemed they battled it out, for what? Supremacy, what else?
Towards the end they had been fighting their way up and down a small twig and eventually one of them gave up and ran away. The other then ran back up the twig and all but shouted out in triumph.
I won! Yeahhh!
Well, maybe.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Wild Things
Gecko. Lives around the house and eats everything in sight or flight around the light at night. It rhymes.
Huntsman. Found under the peeling bark of a tree in the nearby forest/NR. Known as the giant crab spider, young and fast.
Wasp. (can’t remember name now) Was depositing eggs? in rotten old branch in same NR when the ant came to investigate.
Lynx Spider. Waiting on some wild growing Jasmine, such a sweet smell. You have to be careful smelling the flowers.
Honey Bee. Last of the day and I saw this one moving on the ground. It was weak, trying to scramble up on a leaf with its wings outstretched. Death wasn’t far off.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Gecko. Lives around the house and eats everything in sight or flight around the light at night. It rhymes.
Huntsman. Found under the peeling bark of a tree in the nearby forest/NR. Known as the giant crab spider, young and fast.
Wasp. (can’t remember name now) Was depositing eggs? in rotten old branch in same NR when the ant came to investigate.
Lynx Spider. Waiting on some wild growing Jasmine, such a sweet smell. You have to be careful smelling the flowers.
Honey Bee. Last of the day and I saw this one moving on the ground. It was weak, trying to scramble up on a leaf with its wings outstretched. Death wasn’t far off.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Time Comes to Die
Long slender avenue of green, thorny red devil, wings asheen.
Came out of the darkness, the shadowy green.
Antennae a waving, this way and that.
Big black mandibles closing, on what?
The disc of an eye protruding to see.
No one else there but me.
*
Up and down she went. On that dark avenue of green in the sky.
In her hunt for what I don’t know. She awakened to me and not I.
A looking confused for no reason. Would come to her action in time.
I left her a little of sweetness. She never would know it be mine.
*
I love the small things from the darkness so deep.
I love their colours and mine.
I love the shape that god made them.
I love the touch that is Thine.
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Out of the blackness you touch me. Into the blackness of me.
I have so little to give Thee. But do take it all, it is free.
Come to the life you have made me. Take from me all that I be.
When time comes to die, all I can say is …
… I see.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Life Cycles …
… Beautifully.
When I first came back to Brisbane I found in the local remnant rainforest a thorny leafed plant that had flowers much like a Hibiscus. Big showy white flowers with a big dark red heart and tall stamen reaching for the sky that attracted many small flies and beetles so that you could say this is where life starts for these little creatures.
There was also one, just one, big red and blue beetle on that plant. It was beautiful, and it was shy, running away every chance it got.
I was in this forest yesterday and saw the same plant was flowering again with those big white flowers and stopped to look into the dark red heart of it. There were all the little flies and bugs milling around and soon enough I found the big red and blue fella, not far away.
Wonderful nature, what a blast, of sense.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Look After …
… the little things and the big things take care of themselves. There is truth in old sayings and no less this one. If you clean your feet or teeth your body has a better chance of health than if you don’t. Check the tyre pressure and save on tyres and fuel, maybe accident.
Be careful what you think and life unfolds accordingly.
The big picture is painted with lots of dots.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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