Life on the Wood
One of the places I shoot, the local scout camp, has age old wooden bollards separating cars from grass. So old and weather worn they have become habitats in themselves. These pix are from one of them.
Larva, in and out of all the cracks and crevices.
Pupa, just sat there, as pupa do.
Adult a wandering, here, there and everywhere.
A few were deformed somehow, wings and cases, but still got around.
Dark Predator, she had a nest in a dried curled leaf hanging on the side where she guarded two egg sacks.
Scavenger, tiny ant about as big as half an antennae on the adult Ladybird, actually hung on to the mouth area of the big fella until thrown off at a run, rodeo style.
And the ever present jumping and dancing entertainment.
Life goes on, and on!
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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
Blue
Is the colour of …. many wonderful things. Flowers and bees, eyes and seas, things and trees. Trees?
Lovely, beautiful blue.
The deep of space where bright stars shine. The deep of the sea which is also green brine. Ooh!
Deep inside where all things weep. Deeper still the weepings cease.
All blue places, and things, at peace.
Blue is cold and blue is calm. It is also a mood of mind, one might say the precursor to sober temperament, I find.
Blue is the colour of my own true ….
Blue is blue, can’t get away from you.
Can’t have too much lovely beautiful ….
Lovely Beautiful Blue.
© 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.
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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
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.
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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.
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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
Not Dead Yet :)
But first, one of those astounding creatures I see almost every day for your viewing, sensible, pleasure, and to remind you there is more to what you can see. Even if that more is in reality less. Am I making sense? It matters.
I tracked this fellow for some time and caught some real nice shots so decided to post an unusual number of them.
The more you see is the detail that has an existence rendered sensible through the camera device for a snapshot of the otherwise invisible world of vital life, in the psyche, at a place where all has a coherent – to the senses – order. The less is where the detail ends, at the ‘beginning’ you can see now, inside. On the ‘other’ side of anything.
Where sensible order ends and God, dare I say it, begins. Though, in fact, god is in all things, no exception!!
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Amazing isn’t it? The resilience of the human body, or any body – see the frog leap 30 times its length – the fly travel at 100kph hitting or avoiding the debris along the way, just bloody amazing. Especially if you didn’t expect to live that long anyway.
But that’s life. The only undeniable prediction is it will not be denied, will always take some form. As long as there is existence, and I can’t see that ending any time soon. Except maybe in the particular, which is really all there is but let’s not complicate the matter. The particular is the whole, where I am, inside.
So the body just keeps bouncing back, from all the pressures of living, and the accumulated past. The physical pressures are not a problem, just a fact the way light or dark is a fact. It’s silly to have a problem with that.
No, the problem is the past that keeps bouncing back. The past as thought and emotion. But there’s a way to deal with that.
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Do you remember as a kid the way you learnt to bounce the small rubber ball off the ground? At first it was a bit clumsy, bounce and miss, bounce and hit again but off centre and away the ball goes and you have to chase it to bring it under your control again.
But, eventually, you learnt to bounce that ball with ease, even grace. Bounce, bounce, bounce off the floor, off the wall. Wall, floor, wall, floor – bounce, bounce – control. By the practise, as long as there is the capacity. And the exercise is never given to those without the capacity so that’s not an issue, is it?
So you see, it’s just a matter of practise. Right practise!
Practise of the right exercise/s.
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Is there ever an end to the need for practise? If you come to it there is. If you don’t there isn’t. For you, since only your experience is important, to you. Anything else is someone else’s experience, maybe not even that.
Imagination, the curse to be mastered. Then it might, might, be called a blessing, among others. :)
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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