Butcher Bird …
A windy morning she came to look, and fetch what the possum left behind on the ground. A little feeding in winter goes a long way, to spring.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
Sitting on the rain cap tied on one of the bee hotels. I have seen them take a bee from mid-air as they dove past.
But no bees now, none before late spring rain and heat, November or December, maybe. It all depends …
Hello little one … wary of dropping to the ground for that morsel. But she does, and poses a while.
Hey hey … G’day mate … Thanks for the food, the help, the nourishment …
… so called, for their practise of skewering prey and hanging it up for later.
A youngster, interested in what I’m up to in the undergrowth.
After a bit of food dropped by last night’s possum perhaps.
A little pleasure, to have animated nature visit so.
And then she’s gone, that’s wild life, in sense.
No judgement, allows the next event to be.
Without prejudice …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
The Beez …
… are dead, long live the beez.
Lion of the garden, a Blue Banded Bee long gone now. No doubt his essence is passed on, maybe next years bees will shine so.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
Disturbed at night, see his spurs … A frog or … might have objection to them. He went back to sleep, from the dream of waking.
Still dreaming, a much bigger bite than at first sight. Instinctive defence from the nights stem climbing predators.
And just for a change, the angle is relative, down is often how they hang. Magnificent little Blue Banded Bee.
Though the actual form is gone the image lingers.
Invoking all the same reactions, suspected real enough.
Like here, appearing to represent something more substantial.
When, after examining the usual places, it appears there is nothing supporting.
Another image, it lingers still, insistent upon acknowledgement, as all life does.
But not to judge the situation, that we make it so, or something else.
The roiling pressure shapes the body, as the mind, in there.
No mystery to the mechanical, but behind, another matter.
Or maybe no matter at all, just requires seeing.
We’ll see … when all’s done, and not.
What ghosts endure.
The sunlight.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
The Last BBB …
This is the actual last one, an image of. Hanging on under a cold full moon recent nights. With a little luck nature will have populated my mud brick hotels for next season, little B’s asleep. I might move them to a warmer location, soon to catch springs morning sun.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
From the recent Bee Purple, you take what shots are available, priority being to leave no footprint in the sand of their sensible lives. Except perhaps the sight and smell and taste of blooming aromatic nectar filled flowers. They do enjoy that.
There appears to be two different kinds of BBB, or is it ages. The dark coloured, full orange fur coated ones being a bit bigger and just looking more mature. I haven’t watched them so close to know, and does it really matter …
Intelligence self evident, only the self absorbed cannot see, lost in the labyrinthine tunnels of a wholly imagined world. Lost to the world of sense, where these creatures reign. Every one a king or queen behind, each in mortal form below, where all does come and go.
… of this seasons Blue Banded Bees, around my house anyway. But not the last of the pictures.
It’s been cold and wet and the garden in shade of the mornings makes for a difficult terrain to survive in, for the BBB.
One by one they disappeared over the last couple weeks, not missed as they go, but acknowledged then gone.
The seasons turn with the place of the sun and in our orbital world what turns re-turns.
So in the depths of winter, spring is burgeoning behind the barren view.
Well, it’s all relative, isn’t it.
Until it’s not …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Just …
Prehistoric creature, a shield-bug sucking on a vein – in a leaf. How they eat and drink.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
Mother nursing her eggs … then she cradles the young for a while. Nature … not so strange.
Give ’em an orange and they’ll come. The fruit goes off and gets staked in the garden. Habitat too, for some.
Huntsman in the house. A baby caught up on the carpet, stopped a while. Lucky to have all those legs.
Not an unusual sight in the house, often scooping them up for repatriation, before they smother in dust.
Out by the bee hotel, nesting on a tendril of fern hanging from above, about 5mm long these flies.
Plainly, some swollen bellies there, and this is mid winter here. The garden is maturing I think.
At rest late at night on the butterfly bush – what remains still flowering. One of nature’s sentinels.
Fly in the dark, they do … I try not to disturb them though, spider’s about. Robust little thing.
Made his bed on this twig night after night. A hoverfly … with a sense of belonging.
An other fly, also asleep at night but closer to the ground. Spikey little thing …
And a longhorn beetle, for its extra long antennae, laid back to its tail.
… when it looked like there was nothing left to shoot.
From a cold sparse season, a few hangers on.
Seeing into the wildness of nature.
Forms of ‘I’.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Bee Purple
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
Colder and colder, fewer and fewer, the Blue Banded Bees are making a heroic effort at surviving. They also have the sense to shelter from the cold clear sky at night, hanging from a thread.
Literally, life on a thread for these guys. Always somewhere near the nest where the females would usually be. A few of them about the garden during the day.
Still some flowers blooming on our warm winter days, enough to keep a few bees fuelled up for their frantic paced flight.
Fly little fireball, to the end of … burn up the form with the passage of the sun.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Possum …
A little banana satisfies a prowling possum. She is wild but still feels safe enough to take from the hand.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
This ring-tail possum is more secretive, only showing up after the other and later in the night when food is gone.
She’s a tough little thing, solid muscle. You’d have to be to do the aerobatics she does on the roof at nigh and survive.
She waited for me to go before resuming her approach to a little food. It will take time to know her well.
And a little bread, wholemeal with grain and/or seed, no white bread and no sugar or other additions. Just plain food.
… the other one.
They come from above at night. One from across the road, travelling on the power line. Another from the roof of the house. Both are looking for food.
And since they are already here, and there’s no denying them – can’t evict the one in the roof and the other lives elsewhere – so I feed them on occasion.
They appear to be gentle creatures but they are also wild nature and not to be treated with carelessly. The grey will take food from the hand but the other is too wary – different treatment at home perhaps.
It’s one of life’s pleasures, attending the wild creatures, big and small. One of my pleasures.
We’ve got to give space to something besides ourselves, or they/it will all disappear.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Possum 2
Hello Possum … just looking for a bite to eat.
Yin and yang. The two principles of existence.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on the picture for a closer look
*
*
Seasons End …
No fancy camera work, just what I could get without disturbing them. Don’t want to be the death of any this close to ‘winter’.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
These few are regulars outside the back door now, best shelter from the elements, rain, wind, cold night sky.
Proud little thing, comfortable being a bee, alert for non bee things in the cold dark night.
It’s usually the youngsters have the lighter colouring, smaller too straight from the nest, still coming …
I might set up some background during the day, before they come home to sleep. It might disturb them though.
It’s getting colder now and fewer plants are flowering hereabouts. Time’s up for many a small creature.
The Blue Banded Bee can be found sheltering from the cold dark sky under cover of the star jasmine, holding on to dried out stems.
They won’t give up, that’s not their nature. Come sunrise they will be away once more, seen doing what they do best, buzzing about the gardens nectar pots.
No worries about getting through the winter, no fear of death. None of that nonsense for the intrepid BBB.
Bee knows no psychological past so has no future, no imagination to stir emotion to be lost in.
Bee is what bee does, plus the power, of silence, of stillness behind.
Little beauty beeing.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Snake …
Hiding under a web of tough plant stems, see the eye open, middle left. Well aware I am coming for it, unwilling to run with meal in place. Snakes are such confident creatures, rightly so. Carpet snakes are not known for being aggressive.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
See the eyes wide open, waiting … she was reluctant to leave the safety of the pillow case so I had to prod her a few times. Carefully, so as not to cause more than a little encouragement, in order to get a shot or two as it emerged. She’s a beauty.
It emerged, I was in place with camera, it didn’t care. And off it went with a purpose, gotta get out of the clear sky above, eagles about, or kookaburras maybe. About 4 feet long and 1.5 inch across the head, still swollen with mouse. A little blurry because we are both moving, it was a lucky shot, and she’s smiling …
The rains started a while back and a few days into it the cat got jittery, hadn’t seen him like it before. It occurred to me the wet would be a time of migration for the native creatures so attributed his apparent anxiety to a passing snake, perhaps – I had seen a small one.
Weeks passed and he was still nervous about going out, either the back or the front deck, and I thought he just needed more time to get over it, whatever it was. But he wasn’t getting over it … he wouldn’t even go out on his own any more. And it was becoming problematic.
Then one day I was watering a pot on the deck and I noticed faint movement where no movement should be, it was a snake, with a belly full of mouse – I presume. It was wide awake and well aware of me nearby but obviously unwilling to take flight.
What to do … Looking inside I saw the primal fear of a body for snake, or any wild animal capable of inflicting damage, so I had to encourage myself, to figure out what to do with it, and do it. I would leave it be, but not with a scaredy cat in the house, it was making him unhappy and cat was here first.
I’ve seen it done on TV so I got a pillow case and put on leather gloves, but the snake was entwined in the stems of a plant by the cactus so I had to cut what looked like would make it easier to extract the snake without entanglement, if I could get a hold on the head end without hurting it, or me.
And so it was … I disturbed missy snake enough to get her to raise her head and gripped her firmly so as not to allow for accidents of bite, snake bite. Snake didn’t come without a struggle, though a minor one really. The digesting mouse would have sedated it too, I think.
I had its head end in one hand and the pillow case in the other while also using it to release its body from entanglement with the stems, it was easy enough, with room for error. It did try and hold on to one stem it could still easily entwine, but I had a will to remove it …
… without harming it if possible. And all went well. They are powerful creatures, muscle tone like a tree trunk, unbending unless forced. But it never panicked, snake was calm throughout, more or less.
And so was I, more or less. It was a partnership, of a kind. The contrary kind. Into the car and off to the local bush, Eprapah, and release. Pillow case on the seat next to me seeming alive.
Once there I opened the pillow case and had to prod it out and once out it didn’t hesitate, off it went into the undergrowth, barely a chance for a clear shot.
Throughout she appeared to just take it in her stride, fight response disengaged, in it to the end, naturally.
Bye bye snake …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
*
*
Nature's Place 
10 comments