A Jewel of Harlequins
On the white flowered Hibiscus in the nearby bush is a small herd of bugs, Harlequins they are called, don’t know why – possibly for the distinctive symmetrical markings on the ‘face’. These ones are real beauties; they go through many different colours in their little lives, blues, greens and reds. And there are times when they can be found with developing wings that make them look like something from a futuristic car show, and very elegant.
Anyway, these last days they are this wonderful blue with hues and patches of green and red and iridescent, overlaid on a very purposeful looking form. A very attractive little jewel of the forest.
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You have to know where to find them as they don’t appear on all Hibiscus plants, only a few I know of. And then you have to know how to handle them, with care of course. But they also respond to a kind of attention so it’s possible to get a few shots without disturbing them unduly.
And when they are done sitting I put then back exactly where I find them. This one is on my stick, the one I use for stabilising the camera at times is also good for shooting on.
I am usually in the nature just for a walk these days as the little people are shy or just not around after the drastic weather of the last year, and health permitting – other bugs I am catching are from visiting children, no fun at all, the bugs caught this way.
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It’s a simple pleasure of mine, this walking and seeing or sensing. To see the colours and form, the movement and the life in it all.
And then I go home, to tend the wildy garden I have encouraged and nurtured.
Just for a while now.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Dry Time
The long year of rain that washed the bugs away has been followed by a long season of dry, and few bugs are emerging that I can find, not even the Ticks. I had anticipated something of the sort with my gardening work, lots of seeds sown and plants watered with a compost area for bugs to eat and congregate in. The Possum likes the fruit as well. So it’s not all void of creatures to enjoy, albeit tiny creatures mostly.
Even so, everywhere I go there are maturing well fed spiders. It looks like food a plenty but could be a survival strategy, get a net up to catch what you can while there is any catching to be done. But we’ll see how things unfold.
What is coming can be predicted in the big picture, more or less, but the details are unknowable in their timing and context. That wonderful unknown.
There is nothing wrong with there being so few bugs, it’s just different. Last year they were so plentiful at the same times there are few or none this year.
The weather is very different this year, wetter, colder, windier and dryer at different times. And still nature is what it is behind, unmade, of a greater power than man, waving in time.
The one grace of existence, the unmade shining through.
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And here are a couple pix anyway. What a little wonder. And no sign of hunger. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Snake in the Grass
I was out walking through the tall dry grass one recent sunny day and was about to put my foot down when I caught a sense of something out of place – made me stop dead.
A shape that only one creature I know makes, a long and perfect double S. It was obviously a snake from the go but the oddest thing is it didn’t move when I nearly trod on it.
I stopped mid-stride and pulled back slowly and tested with my stick, an indispensable tool. When I was satisfied it wasn’t going to strike I got closer for a rare look at a snake in the wild.
It still didn’t move and I saw its eye was glazing over, a little milky, a sign of death long over. Inspecting it closely from head to ‘foot’ I could see what happened, why it died on this spot.
Its tail was wrapped in a dried out stalk of the long grass that grows here. The grass and tail were intertwined the way you see snakes mating on tv, sometimes, and it looked like the snake was trying to pull away.
But instead of untwining as snakes can, this one tried to pull straight off the grass and the grass cut into its tail, down to the bone, tighter and tighter the more the snake struggled.
And that’s how it died, struggling to live. Held firmly to the spot by a thread of grass wound tight around its tail.
Strange that the snake would have been caught so easily but that’s nature, you can’t take nature for granted.
It was a perfect death anyway. And a perfect life.
Who’s to say otherwise?
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Lady in Moonlight
She appeared as a darker spot on the tall slender grass. In the shadows of the trees with the moon rising behind, standing still as possible holding the stem, I set the camera and lined up the lens for a shot. She was instinctively aware in the moment something was going on, from the vibrations of the movement of my fingers two inches away from her, but didn’t ‘know’ the way we do – with a pause for reflection – and so didn’t speculate on what may be.
A Lynx Spider in repose as the night falls on the field at the edge of the dark forest. A hunter, big eyed, long limbed and fast to the prey. No prey this time though, just me, an unusual sensation felt through the woody grass and along her trip threads. So she didn’t bite me, just fretted a little before settling down.
I do my best to catch her best angle and in the best light but the marvelous nature is master of the detail. I just aim at it, the composition of elements a picture is. Nature does the big bit.
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The way to see anything is to withdraw back into the eyes and register the standout in the scene, the anomaly, and not ‘search’ for anything in particular. Being relaxed helps, and focused …
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Why, oh why?
… do I do what I do, walk in nature, photograph insects, teach relaxation/meditation and macro. For peace of mind is the short answer, I enjoy it.
Relaxation/meditation is the basis for actualising my potential, otherwise I am not doing my best. And if I don’t give of my best, one way or another, I lose it. It’s that simple.
To be in nature, which requires a certain love of nature, where there is nothing man made and where I have something to do that I enjoy, looking – seeing – hearing – smelling – ‘sensing’, is freedom from the world of stress and strain – the mind. Though it’s not ‘for’ anything but being (in) nature, my nature.
Insects are our cousins and are closer in nature to us than the flowers and minerals and so reflect our own nature more closely, and without the complication of emotion. This living reflection is intriguing to observe, since it is my own nature uncomplicated. The flowers are reflective of a deeper nature, a more origional nature.
Many who do it regard macro photography as an expression of the predator civilised, a hunt, and it is, for the hunter. But rather than a hunt I would call it a prayer, not in any ‘religious’ sense but in the sense that to be in nature and capture the image of the more exotic and beautiful creatures requires an increasing knowledge of self, since what they do and how they do it is invariably understandable in terms of self, and a corresponding absence of the ‘human’ in human nature – that incessant naming and emotional consideration that is considered ‘normal’ in our mad world and sets us apart and often against the beings and ways of the earth. The perfect fruit of this way is being, (in) my beautiful nature – because nature is beautiful.
It is a simple way of communing with the god made, and an effective methodical, or instinctive, means of leaving the man made out of it. Methodical means it can be learned. Instinctive means you already know it but may have forgotten it, by covering it over with what complicates.
It, being – nature, is the only real religion, really. :D
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Kill
A lot of Gecko’s live in this old wooden two storey Queenslander. I often see them at the outside light at night and as soon as they see me they run and hide. They will attack and eat anything that flutters on a window or under the light and run and hide from anything bigger than they are – sound survival tactic, usually.
This young Gecko was stationary as I passed and stopped to look. Moments later it was scuttling across the wall towards a corner it could disappear behind. I usually just watch them go but this time I thought I’d see if I could catch one to get a better look.
I was reaching out to cup it in one hand before it disappeared around the corner of the wall when a huge, four inch leg span, Huntsman came around that same corner at lightning speed and snatched the Gecko’s life with a single bite.
The blink of an eye and it was almost over for the Gecko. The Huntsman was taking no chance of losing its catch, holding on tight and then biting closer to the head before silently slinking away with its meal, glistening venom cascading over one of its prey’s eyes.
They had never heard of Christmas. Or …. ?
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
King of Flies – Robber of Life
Burp!
At a small clearing in the forest the grass had grown long and green with the recent rains. Ideal breeding ground for some creatures, ideal hunting ground for others.
Large by the usual size of flies around here, this hunter reigned. It moved easily with grace, never seeming to falter in take-off, capture or landing. There was an efficiency about it, no unnecessary movement or sound, a consummate conservationist designed for stealth.
He sat high in the long untidy grass in wait for something to emerge from the dark shadows below. As soon as a suitable creature, unaware, was within reach up he went to capture with those long spiny legs – the better to grip with – and deliver the ‘coup de grace’ to the creature with a sharp and deadly lancet sheathed in its strong stubby proboscis, usually to somewhere behind the head, via a cocktail of neurotoxin and digestive enzymes that rapidly paralyse and consume.
Cranefly was the prey of incidence today, not too big and not too small, and available in abundance right now – it also has very long legs that help trap it in the hunters embrace, and it moves at a speed and pattern that was easy to track.
The Robber, or Assassin Fly – so called for the way it quickly and silently snatches the life from its prey – was well fed this day.
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It pays to be present to see what is now, and not occupied in the memory – which is then and a bridge to a robber of a different kind.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Dark Side
Sometimes, when no small creatures are showing up, I go searching. This day I thought I’d look in the un-usual places, the dark places that I love to look into – that every boy delights in. Don’t they? Where dangerous creatures live.
I’d lift a fallen log from the forest floor, damp earth smell – rotting wood – life at work, and some-thing would run for cover. Little black bugs, jumpers of some kind too small for me to make out, worms and things.
What is harder to notice is what doesn’t move, the more advanced evolutionary types that know the value of stillness. They know movement is a ‘dead’ giveaway. You need the instincts of a predator to know the need of stillness.
And that’s the trick, stillness. They were still, but I was stiller, and I saw them – a change in the pattern. So I moved in for the shot, carefully. Very careful not to disturb the ground, the air, the creature – by any way or sense.
Here live hunters, the Huntsman and Mouse spiders, and the Centipede. Each brings swift death to their prey, each venomous in their way. So I was careful not to act as a predator, aggressively or intrusive, and gave their due respect.
It’s important to understand the instincts of a predator, and to convey that understanding, in the stillness of being. And so, encounters can be communications between beings of different forms of the same life realised, the same nature.
Nature, one nature, not many.
© 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? ((:
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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
Nature's Place 
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