Preying
Not a great position for preying from but nature contains every variable, known and unknown.
© Mark Berkery … Click on the picture for a closer look … and click again.
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Feast
Observing an assassin bug wandering the butterfly bush over a few days. … What a mighty stabber she’s got, the better to eat with no doubt.
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Eat what? What visits the flowers. … The honey bees have been enjoying the nectar bounty of the newly flowering bush the last few days.
And one thing follows the other. Nothing stays the same. … Slow moving bug captures the frantic paced bee. By watching, waiting, listening, sensing. … Something comes.
It always does. The flies came and joined the feast. The bee must have been leaking. … The carrion flies of the micro world always arrive to a fresh kill.
If this bug had lips she’d need to lick ’em. Must have been nice. … And then she went on her way.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Emerald Nature
Biter
What big eyes you’ve got my dear …
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All the better to see in the shadows … and above and behind.
Rest a while before the next foray into the bloody realm … It’s a bloodbath out there.
An other kind of fly, horse fly I think. AKA march fly in Oz. Can have a painful bite if left to it, feeding on blood.
Though they also feed on nectar this one was intent on human. They don’t give up easy.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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7 Flies …
Robber fly, robber of life. For it’s precise aerial performance in catching and dispatching its prey. A quick jab, usually to the back of the head.
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Picture wing fly, maybe … not sure. Usually found where soft fruit is rotting from their tender affections.
Bearded blue fly, often found at rest around the garden. Next door has a dog they don’t clean up after, they are beauties anyway.
Only found hanging around the blue banded bee nest site, so far. A young fly of another more commonly seen kind, perhaps.
This kind maybe? When a fly is allowed to grow to maturity, often only in the ‘wild’ – ironically – they develop characteristics, of form and colour and bearing, apparent to the eye that sees.
A hoverfly, I think. Golden to the first sight, and precise colouring of the eye. Sometimes the only function is a little beauty.
A bee fly, maybe. I’m no expert at naming … They do love their nectar, with a long proboscis to extract it more easily.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Royal Ant
She struggled in the water a while, head sinking below the surface just as I got to it.
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Fresh from the wet, still vigorous but drenched. Wings clinging with the weight of water.
One wing entangled, torn where her leg fits through it. Flying times are over little one.
At rest a while on the warm bamboo stick, time to recover her energy for the next effort.
A natural creature just keeps going as long as it has the energy, to perform its function, instinctively.
She’s beginning to feel the need for preening, to get the kinks or debris out of her form. Takes her time.
The head is first for cleaning, eyes and antennae, where the senses are primarily located.
And she’s off, exploring various locations for suitability of habitat to her potential offspring.
Or she’s just checking out her world, small as it is it is mighty big to her eyes. Would be to mine …
Relentless, until she finds what she’s looking for, what is right to her sense of things.
And time for pause … everybody needs pause in this fast, hard, hostile world.
A queen perhaps, of the green-head tribe, of which there are many colonies around the house.
Brought to ground, or water in this case, by the strong winds and rain that’s been passing lately.
Being winged she is on her way to birth another ant colony, chances are, workers of the hard soil.
It’s easy to tell where a colony is days after a little rain, where the grass is growing straight and strong and green.
They prep the ground with their nest site diggings, the way a gardener would to plant food and flowers.
Just one of the millions of creatures working the earth, that we would be poorer for their passing.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Lazarus Bee
They just keep getting back up and recovering. Having a good cleanup before takeoff.
© Mark Berkery … Click on the picture for a closer look … and click again.
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Mitey Bee …
Found wandering among the new flower plantings.
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A little coaxing gets her up on the stick and relative safety.
What slows such a diligent worker down so? Exhaustion maybe …
A little calendula nectar works a treat to get her going again.
Possible problem coming into view, around the vulnerable neck.
And there it is, not an insignificant burden to a little bee.
And then she was gone, off on the wind.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Mantis
Recovered from the ground, having been knocked about in the watering. Time for a clean up.
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This restless slow moving fellow, I set him up on the calendula, didn’t seem to mind.
Occasionally stopping with a little colour and background for context, maneuvering for light.
Reaching out to climb on the lens.
Settled for a while.
Let us prey …
Spring has arrived in the southern hemisphere, my Brisbane anyway. Going by the small wildlife in the garden. Sun is up, enough, and the garden gets watered.
All winter we had mozzies and recently they disappeared, more or less. Probably that small plane circling overhead, dusting their nearby mangrove breeding grounds.
Otherwise life forms are burgeoning, sort of, with a few mid sized creatures who had matured elsewhere come visiting.
And then at night it all disappears into the darkness under the stars, and the waning moon.
The frog squeaks his pleasure in the damp dark forest, the garden is still.
Trials of summer heat yet to come. A different pleasure.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Nature's Place 
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