Flying Visit
*Click pictures for a closer view …
The fiddler beetle was zooming round the flowers in the garden, frisky little thing.
So when it stopped a moment I was prepared for some fast action on its part.
As soon as I touched the flower head it was on it dropped off.
Survival strategy at times demands a creature plays dead.
It would have unfolded its wings and taken flight …
… but there was my hand to catch it.
Then it dropped from my hand …
… and took to the skies.
Gracefully.
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It is easy to be grateful in this space.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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The Wilds …
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Looking to see …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Friends …
… of a kind.
Phew … made it.
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Wink …
Recycling some old potting mix in a bucket in the garden that became a trap for a lizard. It fell in.
Don’t know how long it was in there, it wasn’t exhausted yet but it was glad to see me. Clear as day.
Well, don’t know about ‘glad’ but as I lowered a stick carefully in to assist it climb out it clearly took advantage.
I drew the stick up the inside of the bucket and the lizard leaned into it, hooking one leg over it so as not to fall back down.
It worked. As it turned out the lizard was quite tired after its experience and it took a while for it to recover, allowing me a few shots.
These lizards, skinks, are everywhere in the garden, often seen scuttling into some shade or shelter, from preying birds mostly.
Since then I have come across a few of these little lizards active in the open, seeing me but unconcerned
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Longhorn …
*Click on pictures for bigger version – and click 1st one again.
Long-horn … after their long antennae, a sense organ they use to detect their world.
It stopped long enough for a few shots, maneuverable for different backgrounds.
A kind of beetle rarely seen in the garden, with its unusual colour.
Then, without warning, it took to the air and was gone.
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Looking in the garden is suggestive of looking inside, when still enough to see.
Down in the pit something moves until focussed, its nature examined.
Eventually it is gone and something else emerges.
Until it doesn’t … if it does, complete.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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See No Weevil
Sheltering from the rain. Possibly recovering from a fight.
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You can see the right mandible has been severed – click on it, maybe by another’s stronger mandible.
A different kind of weevil, a different aura too.
Proud thing …
With a ‘little’ rain some of the gardens inhabitants, legged creatures, climb up the other inhabitants, plants.
It’s a way of surviving, it avoids drowning and other dangers and probably makes for some unlikely encounters.
The first weevil looks ok at first glance. Then you might notice its drooping antennae, and its broken mandible.
It’s clearly been in a battle with something, probably a bigger one of its kind, for mating rights I suspect, and looks all done in.
The second one is a beauty, well groomed and completely intact, looking proud too. Maybe the winner of that battle.
That’s living, both the good and the not so, and they take it in stride, instinctively. What else could they do … and remain viable.
With our capacity for reflection we can choose what we acknowledge, beyond good and bad, when we can.
Everything in its time …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Seasonal Girl
She’s aware of me and seeks to escape my attention. Not from fear but as a habitual response to a peak of activity in her environment.
*Click on pictures for a closer view …
After a little while playing with her she stops a few seconds and poses for a shot. Treat them gently and they relax enough.
Love a sense of drama with the dark cloudy background. I suspect they live a largely relaxed life, with the occasional life and death clash.
Everything has or is one, a season. It grows, flowers and fruits, then it is gone.
Of course, the Botany Bay Weevil knows nothing of that.
It is engaged in now, being its beautiful self.
Sensing, unselfconsciously.
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Its instinctive intelligence – as it is in all things – is focussed in its primary senses.
Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling – what enables it to endure here.
So it might fulfil its purpose in being, to reproduce.
As in all things, you may have noticed.
Earth robotics, you and me …
… plus self reflection.
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Reflection on instinct, a recipe for madness, what we got.
Until reflection is on being, something else …
… no-thing in particular, nothing.
Letting what passes pass.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Elusive Beauty
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Infrequent visitor to the butterfly bush, faster than most and hair trigger to a finger touching the flower he’s feeding on …
Unless he’s actually engaged, focussed, on eating. Contained. Then you have to be it, to get it, the shot. A matter of focus.
Never met a fly with mental issues – born of self reflection and the imperative to realise peace of mind.
Colourful, unpredictable little thing … wild elusive beauty.
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I am not what passes, and every-thing passes in time, becomes past.
Except for this time, now. Now is always now, it never passes, never changes.
What is always now is the space every thing passes in.
Seeing it is doing it, a guided mystery.
Of wild beauty being.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Of Creatures Past …
… twelve from this year just gone.
The instant before take-off. Just before sunset they seek a roost for the night and may check more than one before settling.
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Lined up on their favourite dead branch just before sleep time. Many native bees sleep this way.
Saved from a watery grave and looking happy for it, to me anyway.
Butterfly on a butterfly bush, a rare enough opportunity afforded by a butterfly migration through the area.
Small wasp depositing her eggs into a not-dead-yet tree. Creatures take every opportunity for habitat.
Angry ant, testing its mettle against the giant flower beetle. The beetle, impervious, took little notice.
Wooly weevil on a drying orange skin staked in the garden. Not seen before or since.
Ambush spider casting a thread into the night. To travel to new places and things, nest site, a mate, food and death …
Fly at night. It’s a good time to catch them still for a shot, carefully – they still don’t like to be disturbed.
Brothers perhaps, sleeping on a daisy with nasturtium in the background.
Nocturnal ant, unusual for Oz an un-armoured ant, also relatively un-aggressive – you can tell by the look of them.
Midge on the blue butterfly bush at night. Everything has its season, its time. Its time is gone, for now.
Being what they are, doing what they do.
Not a problem in sight …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Spider Hunter
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It was just before the rains, I was walking where the drain runs into a creek, the road into a rainforest.
On the edge of things, you could say. And what did I find but ephemeral form. What else is there in this world …
I was inspecting the concrete wall of the drain below the road when she announced herself, antennae waving, staccato gait.
She was already carrying her burden, a spider, food for her yet to be born young, looking for a suitable nest site to deposit.
Following her wasn’t easy but she did present on a number of occasions, shots taken from a prepared position, lying in wait …
Some things come easy, some you work for. No telling what may be either way until the distortion of resistance is negated.
And in the spirit behind that infamous battle cry down through the ages, god wills it … or not.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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