A Silent Death …
Or a loving embrace? Either way, a most unusual meeting.
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Out in the field at sundown with a strong wind blowing I came across a protected area that had a few different creatures sheltering in the grass tops, off the ground. The Orange Wasp was the most noticeable beside the gang of small green golden Nomad bees that I often find roosting here.
Usually the Orange Wasp is so skittish it is gone as soon as I see it, as if the act of cognising it is registered by the wasp and taken as a signal to fly. But the strong wind did interrupt that process this day. The Orange Wasp remained in the relative shelter as the sun went down behind the distant trees, and the wind continued to blow.
I focused on the Wasp, since there is usually no chance of a shot, and watched as it climbed the grass to the top. On the way it ran into a gang of small bees and caused something of a stir. Just one bee remaining behind, as if undisturbed by the wasp’s presence. The others moved off to another grass stem nearby.
And the wasp was curious of the one remaining, aware there was something there and pushing through the grasses to do what, I don’t know – taste, smell or otherwise sense the small bee. It wasn’t aggressive by any gesture or appearance, these wasps are more vegetarian than not, so if it wasn’t hungry the bee was safe. After a short while of the wasp probing the bee the bee moved on up the stem, better safe than sorry – though I think a bee knows no sorrow, just the programming of survival and all it entails. But perhaps, occasionally, a small creature will show signs of self consciousness.
It was nearly dark with some light from the falling sun still getting through the clouds and trees at times, wind blowing as it was – see the bee on a stem in the blurred background in one picture – wind blown into the frame. When there’s time and opportunity I will endeavour to include any sun rise or setting for the background, but it was mostly a case of get what you can while you can. So I shot away at the wasp I was focused on.
*
After I had enough of that and she didn’t seem to be doing anything different so the shots would all be the same or versions of … I looked up the grass stem to where the bee had gone and there was another Orange Wasp facing my way with the bee behind it, and something else.
It was difficult to see now but on closer inspection it became clear a spider had a grip of the small green golden Nomad bee and I wondered if the wasp had any involvement, as in awareness or reaction to what was happening to the bee – it was dying in the grip of a Crab Spider, right next to the wasp, they wait in just such places for just such opportunities.
But no, the wasp seemed entirely unaware of the dying bee, or the spider, and proceeded on down the grass stem as the other proceeded on up it. As the bee died in the grip of the spider the two wasps met an inch below and clearly recognised each other as their own kind and made ‘inquiries’ of each other.
Touching and turning towards each other they were clearly communicating until eventually they came together on the same side of the grass stem and touched heads and ‘beaks’. A form of caress perhaps, or exchange of information of a kind.
Tending only to what mattered to them, not a consideration for the dying bee or predatory spider.
However, it was clearly not an accidental embrace, either one. It never is.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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Darkling Green
Out in the field looking for the Neon Cuckoo Bee in particular, which wasn’t to be found this time round, I came across a few other creatures. I don’t know what ‘it’s said by whom’ but a square metre of earth holds a host of creatures, many of which even I will never see – unless of course I stand there for long enough – don’t you believe it.
What kind of creation is created invisible to most? But that’s not really so is it, if you look with eyes to see you will see. And it’s a wonder to see what is there among the grass, holding on and just looking or being, for now. Or engaged in some invisible unknowable activity?
Who knows, or cares to speculate, when what is so obviously is, and is enough for now.
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It came from the earth, as all things do, even the car and the house. But it came as it is with no purpose other than its own and that’s enough too. It doesn’t need to fit Man’s reality, Man’s particular self-interest.
It’s called a Darkling Beetle, just found out today, a brown one. There is a black Darkling you can see here : Rainbow Wanderer – And it wanders the earth as itself, no thought to be another – thing of any kind.
Darkling sounds like a kind of vampire, or other creature of the ‘darkness’ but it may also refer to a sparkling that can be seen when the black Darkling is seen close-up in direct sunlight. It’s similar to looking at a starlit sky on a dark-ling night, but with all the colours of the rainbow glittering.
One more little wonder tucked away in my nature.
Hello Darkling thing.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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And Now?
… for something a little different from what has become the usual native bee, or so it seems.
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We had a Paper Wasp nest on the deck that had to be moved because it was just too successful; about twenty strong at its height and only a few metres from the front door, and Karen had been stung when she inadvertently shifted it one recent day. So it had to be moved because I don’t like to destroy any part of the nature, the garden. I enjoy all the nature, not just the pretty or cute bits.
One night, all dressed up for the occasion, because I know they can fly at night even if they prefer not to, I clipped the old fern growth the nest was hanging from and brought it down to the front of the garden, about forty metres away, where I had prepared a post to place it in where they would have to work harder to maintain its success rate, by at least having to travel further to the food source. I rather foresaw some of the young moving off to new pastures and the nest attaining a more acceptable number, foresight is not always as it turns out though.
The nest was so successful because of the planting I’d been doing the last year, and allowing nature to take its course, Butterflies and Moths laying eggs all round the place, which in turn hatched and soon enough little caterpillars were eating up the vegetation. That’s where the wasps came in; they fed on the caterpillars, voraciously.
It was a balance though; an ample source of food presented and something came along to eat it, and so on – is usually the way of things. But there appeared to be nothing to eat the Wasp. No deft Wasp eating birds about the place, nor Geckos willing to risk being stung in the dead of night, hence the intervention on my part.
But it seems I got it wrong, or went too far, and the nest has now been abandoned by the Queen, there’s always a Queen to start off a Paper Wasp’s nest. Gone to I don’t know where because it has become apparent the little caterpillars are having a ball in the greenery and plants are dying from lack of viable leaves.
And then, in my wanderings about the garden, I saw this fat yellow Lynx spider. There are many Lynx and other spiders around the garden but none as big as this one is, or has recently grown. It looks like what the Wasps are no longer doing the spiders might be.
Well, we’ll see what happens. That’s what I love doing in the garden, just seeing what happens next. It’s a real epic unfolding; when you really see the creatures little lives as important as our own – in their way.
Which of course they are to the web of nature, my nature. It is our nature after all and we can’t really do without any part of it for long or something gets out of whack.
But it always recovers, that’s its nature too, to live again – unstoppable it seems, and ever changing on a changeless reality.
A maelstrom of possibility in form, and no real need to interfere now, nor inclination to.
*
It’s how we learn, by going too far – one way anyway.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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After the Flood
It just ended today, that’s monsoon season in Brisbane I suppose, heavy rain coming and going.
People get upset at things the way they are but there really is no need. When it rains it rains, when it shines it shines. And it will do that when we’re all gone, I assume, if there’s someone here to know. Things will change when they change, not before. So relax, because it may never be as you want, or fear. Now isn’t that nice, a way to go? :)
Nice and relaxed? Feet up or down and doing something you enjoy, even if it’s only feeling the sensation of being alive. That’s what it’s all about, after you exorcise the superhero, the one who would be special, with something special to do. There is nothing special but what you do, so everybody is special, or not.
Isn’t it nice just to be relaxed, no tension or pretense of being anything other than what you so obviously are, a body of sense. And if there is anything else to do it must present here not there, because I am not there, whoever ‘I’ am. It is here or it’s not, because I don’t know where there is. And I am finished with the other, superhero to the world.
I will never be what someone else was, what a fiction. True, fictions have been known to live, by conjuring with intent. But intent to what, the further undoing of the superhero in another form? What else but to aid the intelligence entombed in such offence.
For that the image has to be left out of it, or is it in, and that’s an exercise to start with, but you only feel mad for a few days, or is it weeks. It’s just like taking off those favourite boots that you’ve been wearing for the last year or so, it feels a little odd at first. Or putting on some new. :)
What do you think, I am mad? And do you think it matters what you think? Life is lived either way, then everything gets left behind. And yes, a sense of humour can hide your pain or keep you going. But you don’t give it up twice, or thrice.
Can you change what you are when what you are never changes, or always changes back to itself? Will the silent judgment of another make a difference? If an island were thought to be a mountain would it be that?
Or are you content to be an ordinary man or woman, maybe with something extraordinary to do for a while, maybe not. Grow old, get ill and die.
Shit happens.
*
Or to throw off the cloak of mortality? Reach for the stars and the crown, touch the beauty and light. See the end to his suffering, touch the wings of his love in her flight?
As I once did, and never gave up on. Cloaks get heavy in the rain, reach shortens with age and with pain. Beauty and light always remain. But suffering the wings of his love in her flight?
Why not? Except, has someone turned it into a game?
*
I called out once, or twice, or thrice. And saw no reply on the wall. Was it eyes a failing in the dim of twilight, or assumption blinding the truth and beauty of little mice.
No echo in the hall, at all. But if you would join me we may still have a ball. :)
And you would only have to tolerate my sense of humour, my …
… intolerance of the intolerable, and my judgment due thereof.
The hero is late, that’s fate. And who is that at the gate?
Late is only late, not fate, but judged no less in kind.
And now, indifferent to the source, I no longer mind.
I can still walk a while, or is it just a mile?
A little wait, dear mate. A smile?
Oh dear, dear dear, what fate.
I must go on a while.
*
The garden is a quiet place, so fair. And when I can’t walk for long I do linger there.
It has many things it needs of me, or so it seems to me from here.
A little time alone, by the seat in the corner, with wasps that know no fear.
Around the corner a vision comes, to show a light from over there.
Will never know if it doesn’t show, the voice I may never hear.
A shining in the afternoon, a welcome, no need to swoon.
Or maybe now, just tell me how, how to find thy boon.
And, please, not just with the same old spoon.
How else can I say it but to the phasing moon.
A little time so soon, my love.
*
So soon, before the cat gets the Dove. :)
In the early hours he prowls the ways around the house.
Looking, treading so carefully, not just quiet as a mouse.
But just in case, he once was bitten, as by a giant snake, or was it a grouse?
Djinn, the feline of the house.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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The Flood
Well, ‘a’ flood. It seems the great Australian drought is truly over. Two years of rain now and it doesn’t look like letting up. Last year I was flooded out of my downstairs home and this year I was prepared for it, or so I thought. I wasn’t.
I did what I thought was needed, according to what happened last year, but this year it just didn’t stop pouring and the rain overwhelmed my preparations and I am typing this in a rain soaked room. No matter, just a little inconvenient and tiring – cleaning up. But no electrical equipment, like cameras or computers, was damaged – so far.
When you live on the ground it’s as well to keep everything off it, and so I did. This is my cave after all, and I know my ground. Just got a little careless is all. :)
*
I have been watching a bee that has made her nest in a piece of bamboo stuck in a flower pot by the front stairway. She feeds well on the plants I bought, with lovely small purple flowers that just keep burgeoning. I knew the rain was coming; forecasts here are usually accurate so we take heed when a storm is brewing.
There is a short log of soft wood that I had been meaning to drill for its use to the flying population of the garden and it got done in preparation for the storm. But instead of it being of any use to anything as a shelter it simply became a block to the force of the wind and rain so the bee is protected from the worst of it.
And it seems to be working. Every now and then we, I and the bee, meet at the bottom of the stairway as she is coming or going from her hidey hole and she doesn’t mind me at all. That’s a small pleasure to me, accepted by a bee, a wild thing that sees no danger in me, can’t say the same for the civilised things.
No mind to that though, civilised things are a bane to nature, just a process man – the race – is passing through. Nature will survive us; I have no doubt, in spite of, or because of my knowledge of self. We just aren’t as big and destructive as we would sometimes like to believe. Pussies of the universe really. :)
But not pussy cats, nothing so cute as new born nature, some of it anyway.
*
The rain has surely been washing the place down. Anything not holding on high enough will have been drowned or washed away. But that’s not Armageddon, that’s nature, and what would we be without it. Stuck, as when nothing moves, that’s for sure.
Not stuck now, and I think I’ll go check up on the wild life in the nearby fields today. It’s perfect weather for finding the rare creatures that are usually hiding or just living out of sight.
What a wonderful nature we have. Indeed! All those God made things that come from this one God made thing – it’s just a word unless you emotionalise it, so don’t.
My great pleasure, in the absence of my great love …
This is the way for today.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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The Yellow Bucket
13 is a lot of pix for one post but she’s a beauty.
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It never really became famous but was mentioned in the last post – A Time For … – as the place I found the bee pictured there, and in light of what has happened since probably deserves a post called after it. Only this time it was the white basin. There’s the yellow bucket I keep filled with water for the recent Frangipani planting, and there’s the white basin, the idea for which came from the yellow bucket. That’s the connection, and now you know why it’s not called the white basin. If it matters to anyone.
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There is a palm tree in the garden, like no other palm tree around. But like all palm trees it drops its leaves, or branches, periodically. It also flowers periodically, and this one is flowering now for the first time in three years, that I know of. And it seems to produce nectar first thing in the morning, for only about an hour. For that hour the flowers are royally attended by a host of creatures, the bees I found in the yellow bucket – lots of them, and all sorts of other small creatures that are about and enjoy a little nectar for breakfast.
The upshot is some of these creatures fall into the water in the white basin, haven’t seen a bee in the yellow bucket since I put out the basin, curious that. Anyway, I’m not cruel, just wondering, what eats the nectar and falls from the flowers above the basin that would never otherwise be seen. So in the basin I leave things floating like life rafts that anything that falls in can hang onto until I come along and lift them out. And nothing has drowned yet, always holding on to something.
*
Well, I have seen one of these Emerald Cuckoo Wasps before. It was asleep, here – Neon Blue Delight – But this one was wide awake and lively after being rescued from the water. I put it on a post of rounded wood and it went about its business of drying out, cleaning off and warming up.
While it did this I went about my business of taking pictures. It can be difficult when the creature is always moving but that gives opportunity for different shots, and I trust I got a few of this rare beauty.
A little beauty fell into my life, though I did arrange the basin for it to fall into. It came nonetheless.
There is no stopping what nature will be. And only a fool would try.
Does that make us a race of fools? Hmmm!
*
When she was done I gave her a sup of honey, and when she was done with that – which was a long time later – I put her in the sunshine and she launched herself into the air and was gone.
Wonderfully colourful little thing.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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A Time For …
… bees again?
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There are Banana trees in the back yard that the Possum and Bats, Flying Foxes they are called, love to eat from when the fruit is ripe enough. I’m watchful to get a few myself this year, as last. The trouble with the trees though is they are big and one recent day I went out and noticed one of them had been cut down, the one that was about to fall on the neighbours shed, that I was going to cut down anyway. Well, a little something I didn’t have to do, no harm.
And I have had to cut down a few of them to keep them from becoming a nuisance, to the civilisation of back yards bordering onto each other, or falling on the clothes line, or the person below. One I cut down was about, what, 20ft tall? And it fell towards the Frangipani, one with lovely red flowers, and broke an extensive piece off it. So, not to waste or leave it for the passers by that took last years cuttings I planted it in the front garden. I’ve been doing a lot of work in the front garden, for the flowers and bugs and photos.
It’s not as if I haven’t done this before but such a large piece, about five feet tall and branched, I wasn’t sure it would work. I plant it in the ground, in a spot it fits, some might say ‘it likes’, and water it enough to keep it from drying out and losing its leaves. It seems to be working; at least it has new shoots and is showing no ill signs so far, maybe a little soft at the extremities.
What I do every day is fill a bucket with water and every now and then go and pour enough to drench the ground, a brown clay soil, and as I said it seems to be working and in about 10 or so years will provide shade in that corner from the setting sun.
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The thing is whenever I go to the bucket and look in I often find some creature that has fallen in the water and hasn’t found a way out yet. So I take care of that first, put a finger under the creature and bring it to the top of a branch and let it off to dry out on the Frangipani tip. Where it sits and grooms itself, wanders about, tastes the water, and sometimes falls back in the bucket below – that’s livin.
The other thing is most of what I find are bees, tiny bees that I have seen nowhere else but in the water bucket. Isn’t that an odd thing? They are less than 1cm long, 10mm, barely visible except for something to see them against. If it wasn’t for all that preceded it I would not know of these particular bees, the ones from the yellow water bucket.
How one thing always leads to another, everything has consequences. Some can be predicted, and some only generally so. But the wonder is in the not knowing. You can try and work it all out but what a mental waste, just wait and see.
You never know what nature is going to show up or where. But one thing’s for sure; you’ll see more of it if you are out in it.
Whatever ‘it’ is. Sense, nature, getting the hands dirty, seeing, smelling, doing whatever.
It’s a pleasure.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Bee on Sunset
It’s warm these days and not so easy to capture a shot of these very fast moving bees, especially out in the wild. So I wait for them at dusk and watch for where they land, and fly and land again. It’s never as simple as taking one spot and sticking to it. They need to settle in like any creature, in their way, moving to and fro until they are right. No more disturbance, inside, and ready for the night.
So, because the temperature often determines how active our bees are, there is a very short window of opportunity, two of them with natural light, and the best one is at dusk.
Waiting to the last minute is an option, or working what I can from a certain darkness, maneuvering the roost for the BG as I go, until I get something that is not the same as hundreds I can get without the work.
So, after a little work, here is the first Blue Banded Bee of the year. On the setting sun. A fitting BG for such a tireless little wonder.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Gold
Green gold, red, blue …
I prefer to call them Jewel Beetles, christmas beetles they are usually called. But christmas is a hoax, the usurpation of what was once the celebration of a passing or seasonal change – with a knowledge of the heavens and earth as its basis, instead of the economic and psychological exploitation it is today – the same thing really, exploitation – the way we are.
Well, we can simply acknowledge the good, whatever it is. The starry night, a windy day, rain in the afternoon, the colourful flowers. The amusing character of the bugs in the garden. A partner if there is one. So many things, small and not so …
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They favoured the fern for eating at the time so I worked with that. Gotta take what you’re given, if you can. And so I present to you … one of the wonders of the earth – of which there are countless. A springtime character.
Gold, a colour in the psyche on the way down, or is it up, to a place that’s not this one.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Nature's Place 
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