Crucified …
A kind of Beetle only found on the pink Crucifix Orchid, so far. Surveying her domain.
*Click the pictures to see bigger version.
She loves a good feed of the freshest buds, both with a colourful heart.
Aware too of the photographer, just doesn’t know me by name.
Disappearing for days at a time she comes and goes by her own nature’s design.
Looking good in her yellow jacket, a warning to some perhaps. Pretty on pink …
Always climbing back up towards the light, where the freshest buds are found.
The rain came followed by a cold snap, here in a sub tropical Brisbane winter, and must have driven all the small creatures into the depths for survival. Those it didn’t kill.
Such is nature, everything in constant flux, no rest in any condition for too long. And of course the weather can be reflective of what’s inside, if you can see it.
Rain to wash away the dust of seasons past, cold to wake you up or knock you down. Nature doesn’t care one way or another, or cares for all the same.
So, Beetle or man, you shake it off or take it on, rise up and start another day.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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The Last Bee
Before : resting undisturbed.
Click on the pix …
Bigger than she looks.
Not a comfortable mouthful for a night-time predator.
And after : back to sleep.
Definitely the last Blue Banded Bee for this year. I have been trying to provide enough for her to survive but I think the cold may get her in the end. I even have a white bowl out with a blue sponge in the middle of it soaked in sugar solution, like a giant flower, so she doesn’t have to fly far first thing on a cold morning to fuel up – haven’t seen her take it yet.
The shots were taken in the dead of a cold night with a reflector under her, so there was less shadow below. It was just a piece of paper attached to the lens by elastic, a bit clumsy really but it worked to a point. I bumped her with it and she protested by spreading her legs that way, as if to say ‘I’m a bigger mouthful than I first looked, and you could choke on my sharp pointy bits’.
They do that when disturbed at night, if it’s cold enough that they don’t fly off to the light, make themselves look bigger. Many creatures do it, cause themselves to appear bigger than they are, or an uncomfortable mouthful, until the threat is gone.
It’s a working strategy people also employ when feeling threatened. Nature … it’s our nature after all.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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On The Edge …
Mating Leaf Beetles. A grandstand view, picked for the shot, replaced and then they were off up the tree.
Come into my arms … says the Clown Spider to the …
Steampunk style? One of Gill’s finds.
We thought this wasp was in trouble, dying maybe. She was so lethargic and approachable. See her other side.
On the abdomen is a small crater-like wound, weeping from under the fold, and swollen. She has been parasitised and the alien life form is growing.
… of the dark vasty deep, of the water treatment plant. Some say an off smell drifts from it but I only smell the sweetness of the earth, with the occasional whiff of active water – can’t smell ‘off’.
Gill and I started in the garden and there was not much to shoot at all, probably something to do with heat and dry – not much rain this year, and rising temperatures. Not encouraging.
So it was off to the local hot spot and though there wasn’t a lot to be found there was more than I could have anticipated, or seen alone.
Bugs were mating in the shade, some bugs dying too, and others just looking fantastic.
Magical nature, deeply touched. The earth turns on this stuff.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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Rare Visitor …
… to my garden. The Neon Cuckoo Bee lays her egg in a Blue Banded Bee’s nest and the BBB provisions it for the NCB. This may account for an apparently hostile relationship when both approach the same roost at sundown, maybe not. Maybe they just squabble over top spot on the grass stem, as the BBB seem to do amongst themselves.
Either way she is a real beauty, black and blue set against the yellow flowers. No complete body shots, she was too busy feasting, but nevertheless a treat for the observer that sees, that resonates in a place in the uncontaminated psyche where nature comes from.
A pleasure to me.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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Macro Walkabout …
Of course macro is fun and interesting and I get to meet people I otherwise wouldn’t but it’s not the most important thing I’m doing right now. Something else comes first.
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The first two pictures are from the garden before Andrew arrived and the rest are from the surrounds of the local water treatment plant, bordering remnant rainforest and extensive mangrove swamp. On the edge of the wilds you could say.
There were more creatures to be found in a couple hours than I had thought possible given the wild weather we have been getting lately, so wet and windy. But that’s nature, you never know what amazing little form of life is coming up next.
These are all native insects that have a function in the essential nature on our doorstep. The nature can’t do without them and we can’t do without it, we are it.
Native bee foraging in the flower and keeping out of the wind for a while.
Patterned Flower Beetle looking for somewhere safe. I helped her to a flower where she loved some nectar.
Botany Bay Weevil sitting out the storm and unconcerned by the flash.
Little Red Beetle and Plant Hopper passing.
Passed … There’s fire in those eyes.
Assassin Bug, a juvenile I believe. Hunters all …
Bug on a Seedpod.
An older version perhaps, on an older Seedpod.
Jewel Bug against the sky. Lively little things.
Sandpaper Fig Beetle found only on the Sandpaper Fig tree.
Tiny Black Jumping Spider. Excitable little fellow, he’s a male.
Golden Spiny Ant, a Queen I believe. You can see where her wings have recently dropped from.
Colourful Leaf Beetle taking its time …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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And Then There Were …
The Botany Bay Weevil didn’t notice Xmas coming and going. It was all just time passing, the sun rose and set and in between they did what they do.
Feeding, flying, f…… and posing for photos when the cameraman comes along. Can’t keep a good weevil down. But no, no personality involved at all, of the Weevils.
To capture two together is a rare event, signifying … only that they do …
That’s the fact.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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The Three Hombres …
The Three Hombres … A post here wouldn’t be complete without pictures.
Some of the latest visitors to the garden, a trio of beetles on the pink Crucifix Orchid. They aren’t found anywhere else in the garden, that I can reach.
It just shows, there is a place and time for everything. In the garden, or the field, there are tides of things, living and dead, the coming and the going of the forms of life.
Within the tides there are eddies and currents, splashes and sprays. It’s a wonderful thing, not knowing what’s coming on the next wave.
Out of the mystery she flows …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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Gypsy Spider …
She’s back … At the beginning of September this year I went out into the garden to have a look around, it was near enough 1.00am. There hadn’t been much to shoot and it occurred to me to take the camera with me, not unusual that.
And there she was, the first place I looked, sitting in meditative pose atop a small daisy bud. A tiny ghost spider, bright against the dark of the night.
Since then she has come and gone across the garden, from daisy to butterfly bush to sunflower, chia, coneflower and round again. Through torrential rain, baking sun and howling winds …
Every time I see her she has grown, and every now and then I come across pockets of young crab spiders, some hers I suspect. Some numbers dead in a tray under one of the bee hotels.
Currently she is resident on the yellow butterfly bush, one leg missing and bolder than ever – age and experience showing. She lets me get very close now without much sign of alarm or resistance.
I trust she lives a while longer, fulfilling her purpose of nature’s intelligent instinctive desire, albeit unconsciously, and we will meet again in the garden.
All the good is in the garden, or the garden is all the good, an other time and place … inside.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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What A Feast …
… the garden is. In more ways than one, I know.
To the senses a delight, of colour and form, scent and texture. Then just a little closer and …
… nature knows no pity, no sentimentality, just survival and reproduction. Only the fittest, the fastest, the craftiest endure.
And the wild formless intelligence behind it cannot be denied, while no thing, no body, lasts longer than its time.
I had a dream … that turned out to be a nightmare.
Now I don’t dream any more.
And the dream goes on.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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