Civilized Ant
Travelling along an old rotting tree that had fallen in the forest, these gentle silver-backed ants. To get them to slow down I gave them a drink. They loved it and also took time to groom themselves, time out from the incessant but unhurried search for food to survive – among their other daily doings.
It’s not all work, to live as long as possible without a wasted effort, just to survive. The simple pleasure of a walk in the woods, or a drink of water without consideration of significance or consequence – real civilization.
The beast, with always an eye on a different moment to now, brought home to the being of sense from the frenzy of mind.
These ants know something, even if they don’t know they know it.
Relaxed is the way to enjoy the simple life.
Truly Civilized Ant. ((:
© 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
An Unusual Death
This fly is on a new metal flagpole at the local scout camp, the diagonal line is vertical. I didn’t notice until I got home the fly is dead. Its mouth part is ‘flat’ against the metal, not just hanging, and it looks to have absorbed something that caused the crystal growth from the joints on the abdomen, maybe.
It was a very windy day but the fly was stuck and the crystals seemed to fall to the pole. A case for Poirot perhaps, or even Sherlock Holmes.
Life is full of wonder, even in death. Or especially in …
Then another fly came along and played around the dead fly, here and there. Turning and twirling a dance so fast and fine. A little beauty, to be sure, where there is no pre-judice.
A little death hurt no one.
An unusual life. To be sure …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Flap
Here we go!
I can’t do it with you looking!
Are insects self aware? Up to a point, the one where they start to make a problem of living.
© 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.
*
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?
*
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
Surprise Surprise
Usually I can’t get near these before they are fluttering away but I looked down and there it was, a butterfly, still pumping up its wings. It was only just born a butterfly and must have climbed up on the blade of grass that gave it some isolation while it fully came to its butterfly form. So I said hello and took her picture. She didn’t mind.
While I was doing that a Jumping spider came along and performed for us. Turning this way and that, a little dance of nature to entertain while the hard work of cramping down for the shot was undertaken. It’s ok to say of a spider : Sweet little thing. Delightful character. Wonderful nature.
Evidence of its recent moth meal in the scales on its ‘fur’, here and there.
*
It’s no coincidence what appears as nature since it is my nature appearing. The order of things is from inside to ‘outside’. So when a butterfly shows up where none should be I take notice and allow the simple acknowledgment of what it is symbolic of, new form, new life.
Let it be.
*
For two days the same kind of butterfly has been under the outside light, just sitting there. And now it’s gone. I suspect a hungry Gecko got it, judging from the disturbance beneath its last position – flowers and holders upturned.
What does that symbolise then?
Everything has its time.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Cold Cold Sun
The weather in Brisbane is lovely this time of year. Now the run of rain has more or less broken, the sun is warm and the wind is cold. It is winter here after all. Although this means there are much fewer creatures about to photograph it is a welcome break from the summer’s heat, naturally.
The light is still bright but I don’t have to squint to see and walking in the nature has fewer hazards, such as the mozzies – still here, only fewer.
*
Some small creatures are still attracted to the light at night and the flowers beneath it. Truly wonderful creatures, yet so easily overlooked. And it is so in their most colourful clothes their lives are shortest. A brief flowering of form, to do what must be done – this is existence after all, in preparation for the death that inevitably follows.
It could be seen as sad but that’s not so. Death is not the end we think it is. An end, surely, to all that sense – colour and form. But a new beginning too, for life inside. Existence is a tunnel of events and circumstances and it only requires that it be traversed, with an eye on the greatest value, whatever that is for one – you or me. No morality please.
And the greatest value is to undergo the effects of existence without the holding on that just makes more effects that then have to dissipate or die. Surely? That’s being new, being now.
*
Death on my mind? Only in passing.
Passing what must be passed.
A little death. ((:
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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