Nature's Place

Maggie is Aussie short for Magpie. This one on the water tank, nice background, light was good – soft. … A shot in two or three hundred. Then a fellow at the market asked if I had one. So it got printed, glad it did.

They don’t stop still for long, always bobbing about. Hard black and bright white, difficult to get acceptable exposure. … The other side of the bright red eye, an injured eye.

Two in a row. Something must have grabbed its attention, to keep it still for more than one acceptable shot in quick succession.

Love the smokey backgrounds on these – no post processing needed. … Know what you want and shoot for that, usually by eliminating what you don’t want – a long procession of redundancies. Such is life.

This pied magpie is sometimes on the stool outside my door in the mornings, waiting for a bit of my breakfast maybe. Occasionally warbling a complex song to the sky.

I consider the magpie an intelligent creature, communicative to people. Not that other birds aren’t intelligent, but in their own and different ways. All are embraced in this space.

There’s a society of birds where I live. Different tribes or families with their distinct sensible form and character, behaviours and place in the pecking order of things. And whatever the conflict, they never go to war.

It’s interesting to watch them go about their business, and how they sometimes make my business theirs. When I’m eating for instance, but not only. They do like fresh water, as the place heats up.

In the breeding season the Maggie can be threatening to some people, though not to me. I think they can pick those who can be harassed, and harass them. It’s the vibe.

So watch out, if you’re afraid of the Maggie he’ll know. If he comes for you be contrary, look up and raise your arm up to the sky. That will confound him.

Or make a friend of him, or her, at other times.

One of the colourful characters of Oz.

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look …
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* If you’re interested in buying a picture or two see this page – Pictures of Bees and Frogs for sale.

It’s a tough life being a bee. Born to find a new place, winds blowing this way and that, never know what’s coming. But never a worry either. … And work to be done.

She had started this nest long before I saw her at work. Coming and going for the green stuff she’s working into the nest entrance. The last part of the job for this nest site.

Once she’s at work she tends not to see me. But when my presence, or form, changes her map of her location much she comes to investigate me. So I just tell her all is well.

And she hears me and goes about her business unconcerned. It’s nice to get along with the wild things of nature. It is our nature after all.

Until the very last she was putting just green stuff down on the nest entrance. But the final layer included some bits of dirt and debris that effectively broke up the appearance of a discernible hole covered over. Camouflage, another of nature’s little survival skills.

Today while sitting on the verandah I noticed some activity around one of the old bee hotels. Thinking it might be an old, or new, orange tail resin bee moving back in I got the camera to have a closer look.

But it wasn’t an old bee, it was a new one. A new red eyed red head bee. I’d never seen this one up close before. It’s a resin bee, and that’s chewed up leaf its working to seal the nest entrance with.

Native trees with such new workable green leaves after the recent rains would probably also have other characteristics. Eucalypt resins are known for their medicinal properties.

Isn’t it amazing how parts of earth nature fit so beautifully with other parts. And all the parts make up the whole of the earth.

And the whole earth nature is a part of the solar nature, then the deeper cosmic nature.

All the parts fit perfectly together, from the stars to the bees.

Everything in its place …

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It does suggest something holds it all together, some principle or other, something unknown. Maybe even unknowable.

Now what could that be … mmm?

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look …

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Shy little fellow.

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The punk rockers of the garden.

Some come for a bath, others for a bite to eat. Little Joey was dancing around the garden, delighting in being alive, in the senses.

A pied magpie comes to the door in the mornings, stands on some box’s looking in. It often lands on the table I have set up to do some work on. Last night I painted a board for the market stall and left it on the table to dry. I told the magpie not to shit on it, and what do you think it did? 

A delightfully colourful day.

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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One of the few frogs showing up. Sedge frog, eastern dwarf green tree frog. About an inch long. They like it among the crucifix orchid.

I take the best I can get, without much ado or strain. They come or they don’t. No need to stress it.

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Skink, with a sharp eye on the big looming shadow, me and my camera. Once cornered and they see no danger they might walk onto your hand.

Might. This one on the big yellow bucket. Came out of the hose from the water tank, asleep and rudely awoken, by me. But I hauled him out, or was it her.

And not far away, jumping spider. Her I think. On the fungus covered orange, left to rot on a stick in the garden to provide habitat for a fungus weevil.

The fungus weevil, him and her. Also on a fungus covered orange on a stick. They can live their lives on this orange, plenty of fungus to eat.

Keeping an eye out for what interests her. Big eyes to see all the better with. Ready to jump as and when required, for food or a mate – to get out of his way maybe.

The male, those long front legs. Known to be useful in knocking down the competition in mating and food acquisition. A very competitive creature.

Her, laying into the orange overtaken by fungus now. It’s what they do, some of … And everything comes around again.

Winter is all but over, quicker than another year. The garden is acting like it’s spring, greenery shooting for the sky, some flowers already blooming.

The birds and wallabies come and go but there’s not much insect life yet, nor frogs that eat them. Though there have been rats about throughout the cold time.

Time in the garden, walking and stopping still. Time to sense, to see and smell. Time to fill, with all the forms of sense, and more.

So much sense, no time to kill.

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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Rainbow Lorikeet. Licking its lips. Does a bird have lips?

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The eyes have it. That something, spark of being, that looks into existence and says ‘I’ am here.

Who am I?

I am bird, Rainbow Lorrikeet bird. Who are you?

You are looking at me, RLB.

We are friends … :-)

Not always seeing the same …

But always seeing I am. If I just let it be.

I had a dream, of many.

It was a peculiar dream, of many.

In it the dreamer wove a tale of healing so unlikely.

Funny how dreams like this can have a depth, a reality to them.

They are not of the dreamer in this particular existential place, they are of the dreamer in this grander, more real space.

The one being of the particular, a sensation perhaps. The other, a sense of space encompassing it all. What ‘all’ is.

Difficult to grasp at times, I know, but when I stop trying to change things, change happens.

And the rain begins to fall, I hear, outside in the dark of night.

Softly.

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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Kingfishers …

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It’s the middle of Autumn here in Australia and the pace is slowing down for some. The insect life or activity has reduced but the birds weren’t built for the sudden falloff.

Birds don’t store energy as fat like wingless creatures do. They wouldn’t be able to fly otherwise, at least not efficiently and survivably – my own new word.

So I’m helping them out for a while, see what happens. And what happens is they show up en masse. The raucous Mynas and Lorrikeets, and the quieter ones too.

But the king and queen of them all has to be the Kookaburras. A pair that come to oversee the melee below, as kings and queens should do.

It allows for perspective, not to attend the fray.

Nor to think about what is beneath.

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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A striped marsh frog I think. Very fast to escape attention, as soon as you take your eye of him he’s gone. A regular caller at evenings, already father to a pool of tadpoles.

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Hunter wasp, tracks down the Huntsman spiders and lays an egg on them after paralysing it. Here gathering some mud to seal the nest entrance with.

Kookaburra, always about to observe where other birds play and feed. In case something in the grass is disturbed to movement. Then she’s on it in a flash.

A shy female wallaby, usually settles down to take a little food at the end of the day. We bump into each other at night too, as I go for a walk under the stars.

Grasshopper on zinnia. They’ll eat everything if let. But they are prey to many other creatures in the garden so not much for me to do there.

Yellow zinnia, one of many colours in the garden right now. With more on the way. It’s a simple pleasure to tend the garden.

On the stick by the birdbath, a native noisy mynah shaking off the excess water. On the lookout for any playful, or otherwise, attack.

Another coloured zinnia. There’s many more flowers about but too much for this post.

The young stone curlew. Mum and dad are away, maybe left this one to find it’s own feet. Like we all need to do eventually.

I’ve had the place to myself for a while now, more or less. So I’ve been wandering about the acre or so, tending the flowers and bumping into some of the more obvious visitors and a few permanent residents.

It’s the way it is, if nature is given the space some creature will take up residence. What nature does.

For best effect all I’ve got to do is not think, too much …

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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She’s a little beauty. And though small, she does command respect – fear doesn’t help. It would be a different world with more respect about.

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She’s only as thick as a thumb, or a clothes peg. As she investigated under my plant potting table.

Left to her self, with respect, she just went about her business and went on her way. Only when we disrespect, inject our ill nature, does nature reflect it and react adversely.

This is what respect looks like, of a fledgling for a wizened old snake. :-) … Still finding its presence but still enough respect.

As I stepped out through the fly-screen door I instinctively rebounded at the sense of something not quite registered yet, something moved on the ground near my feet. Just as it reacted to my appearance, as form and movement, and presence – the mostly invisible radiance we all have.

A snake, a whip snake I thought … We both maintained composure, remembering presence – all things have it – and carried on. I with my cup of coffee and she in her search for food, shelter, nest site, carried on investigating the various nooks and crannies of the veranda.

The remembering applies to me more than the snake, snakes do it instinctively but we have to re-realise it, presence. Having come into existence with it, to invariably lose it to identity – as a body afraid to die or the fear of death, for instance. Only to find it again, because there’s no other way, in the end.

Anyway, as she moved then so did I, wondering what she was up to, and in a way introducing myself. But she was already introduced, all she cared about really was my presence. That told her there was no danger from me, where we stood. Because I didn’t fear her and so react to her cold confident ways in my space.

Though her presence does instill a certain respect, she is unforgiving of disrespect. No need for fear, in her nature or of her nature. My nature. Not unlike we people, in that respect. For without respect, for situations, people and things, we all wouldn’t last long at all. Nothing tolerates disrespect for long, and respect requires presence.

It’s a long winding road we tread, each to their own, to presence and respect. And everybody’s on it, to one degree or another, to one radiance or vibration or another. It’s the vibe that matters, isn’t it.

Everything has a fundamental presence or vibration. And all we have to do to read it is get back down to our own vibe, or presence.

There it is, in the sensation where no thought or emotion goes.

Read it … as it is, here and now.

No other place or time matters.

Here and now.

© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.

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