A Few Pictures …
Consummate fly, knows his garden, has no doubt or depression. Lives his life as a warrior, no looking back.
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Grasshopper, eats a lot. A little place given over to them. No doubt others enjoy their presence, in the dead of night.
Never a dull moment beetles from the bush. Must be the wild living, makes for living wild. No divided self …
Shy leaf beetle, usually, but caught out on a twig it couldn’t turn on. Gentle vegetarian, until hungry for meat …
Ubiquitous garden fly, enjoying the pollen like any other sane creature does. Sane is not thinking about it …
Sunflower weevil. One of the many kinds found wandering the garden. It all depends what is available to eat.
They come in waves, when the flowers first start to bloom, helping make seed for the next generation of green.
What a colourful creature. Just being its beautiful self against the blue sky. Appearing early spring for a while …
Orange eyed hopper, can be gone in the blink of an eye – mine. A family oriented fellow, always some kids about.
… from the garden and surrounds.
It’s been a wet season so far and the small creatures are unpredictable, except for the bees that only vary in numbers visible.
Unpredictability, not knowing, allows for the new to be. Or just allows for being new, no new to come since it’s already here.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Twilight Beauty
Dark enough to disappear into the shadows. Movement enough to notice. Wild enough to survive in a world of pure sense.
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Sun on clouds behind, the time wasn’t yet right for her instinctive activity – to eat and mate and even play perhaps. Why not …
The pure instinctive pleasure of being, in colour or form, that is only reflected upon by the human eye, or I. Keeping emotion out …
What’s this … Springtail looks up in awe at the giant beauty-beast above. May be a story there for the young ones.
Out of the shadows she rose, disturbed before her time, passing through my peripheral view in her butterfly flight.
Almost didn’t see her in the shadows at dusk, except she moved. Movement, a dead give-away to the eye that sees.
She is a beauty, her elegant form testament to her makers genius. Between light and dark she wakes.
But she wasn’t ready for flight just yet, rather to sit until the dark was deep enough.
And then away … this Lacewing dancer.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Bee Life
Hello world … Breaking out of the nest after a long winter, it’s time to get to work. My little brave bee, instinctively …
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Time to stretch out, on the wall of the hotel, orientation time perhaps. The sky lightening behind, it’s a new world.
Spring cleaning, a relative that didn’t get through the winter is pushed to recycling. Thorough little housekeeper bee.
She lines the nest with resin for protection, some gets spilt on the way in, and she enters backwards to lay an egg.
Not quite finished, she goes to sleep the best she can. Not the safest position in a house full of geckos, but she stings … I know.
On her way to replenishing the earth with bees, one on the other in a deep dark chamber, here sealing up the first nest entrance.
And what’s this, one greeting another to the new world, male looking for a mate, or just saying hello. They talk to one another …
And in case anyone thinks a bee is fragile, I’ll have you know she’s fierce as a lion to protect her ways. Gentle too …
The wasp appeared, at first no threat it seems, no ovipositor I see. A male perhaps, or just young. Found below the bee hotel.
Here she is in fuller form, ovipositor held aloft behind, sitting on the hotel wall, listening for the signs that tell where to …
This is where, where else … She found a place to lay her egg, a bees nest clear as day. The sheath of her delivery rises.
And this is how it goes – the bee does her work and the wasp does hers too, so it turns. Everybody has its time …
Some work for resin, others for the meat, each is born of the earth. Mothers all … except the males of course.
Every year the orange tail resin bees wake up with the warming sun and the moisture of spring rain.
These may all be female bees, mostly found by the nest – a hotel made of a log drilled for their use.
Their primary use seems to be to lay eggs, along with a little food bomb for the larva that will bee.
Another use is protection at night, somewhere to sleep away from all the predators in the garden.
The males live and sleep somewhere else in the garden, not too far away but still a mystery.
Once the bee cycle is underway and some eggs are sealed up in the nest a wasp turns up.
She, the wasp, is also laying eggs, in the bees nest. Her young will take advantage …
And so it goes, one thing dependant on another thing, until completion.
An end that is not ‘just’ another beginning.
But a beginning … without end.
Hmmm …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Elegant Visitor
If existence is a mirror what could this little beauty symbolise …
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This little beauty, feeding on another beauty. There is beauty in and behind this fly. It is seen …
… inside. This is a wonderful intricately designed living thing, god made. Just looking to see …
To think there could be the one without the other, the mechanical without the spirit behind …
The whole, of every thing, exists in the space I see it in. Could the space represent a greater reality?
Could it be that simple? Well, I’ll go with simple any day. Though it’s not easy.
Simple is focus on the sensation inside. See how easy that is …
Life comes in all shapes and colours, form. This Drone Fly is one of the more elegant ones. He only comes once a year, early summer, and stays a couple weeks.
I have to be in the garden waiting before he will show up, he only comes if I call him … believe that if you will. He is fearless among his kind.
His way of flying is particular, has a certain quality of control other flies don’t. Beautifully quiet and deliberate.
His colourful dress and sleek form mark him out, uncommon. Particular work goes into his making.
A messenger of high regard amongst the gods, and wears the badge aproud.
If you see him on your travels say hello, he might be there for you.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Helmed Warrior
Proud little thing. Holding on to a blade of grass as he surveys the terrain, what he senses.
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And on my hand for a while, while I got the blade of grass ready for his consideration.
Up and down the blade he went, undecided on a course or direction. Wonderful coloured helmet.
What goes on in his tiny mind, is it really that small … He doesn’t need much inner space for his functioning.
Pointed little fella. Represented in his horned helm of green. Casting about for indications, of what is important …
While I was inspecting the tree with all the christmas beetles this little fella landed at my feet and proceeded on his (or her) mission, to travel, to feed, to mate and die under the sun and moon.
What we all do in one way or another. And along the way if we get to actually enjoy doing it all, just being here, how lucky is that, and a bit of work.
What a wonderful world … or earth, the simple things being, being simple.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Jacaranda & Co
Wings still unfolded, he was content to wait out on the end of a projection. Safer that way.
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There’s only one direction danger can come from, behind. As long as you don’t fall off in the darkness.
Wave … They often make strange gestures when quiet and alone, exercising their limbs, no doubt.
Here you can see one of its other handicaps, missing lower legs. Who knows how …
And from below … Wing trailing like a cloak for this well dressed beetle.
Eyes feel the need for cleaning. Nature’s creatures spend a lot of time preening, keeping in top condition.
Clearly incapacitated, with no sign of self consideration. We can learn from the fact of nature.
The rain came and soaked the ground, the garden sang out green, and the little creatures came out to play – what they do.
Though there was barely a leaf on the jacaranda tree after a long dry winter it was only a week or so after the rain started it was covered in flowers, famously.
One rainy night I made the most of some christmas beetles knocked to the ground by the force of wind and falling water, some just couldn’t hold on.
Colour and contrast, some of the little beauties in a small patch of nature in the garden.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Bug Rain …
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It has rained for a week, or more … a tree fell across the drive, revealing rot enough three more have to come down, before they fall.
And on the way down it took the top off another healthy tree, full of bugs, that made its way to a bucket of water, to keep it alive while they …
One day there was nothing but the spider to shoot, who is now running out of flowers to hunt on. The next there was more than I could tell.
Ripples in the pond, a drop wets everything it touches.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Mother … Again
… and again.
Up close, without the personal … this spider doesn’t rationalise or emotionalise her situation. She is … the act of sitting. Knowing …
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Sitting in expectation, without a thought, as instinct informs her being something will come to this also active living flower.
Infinite variations in posture, in readiness for that something when it comes. An almost meditative occupation, why not … instinctively.
‘What’s that I see above me, come into my arms, let me show you the way of spider dear. A one way exercise, have no fear.’
Oops! No crack in this hard shelled ladybug, to slip in a pointed lesson in survival, not yours. And ladybug went on her way.
No mercy for the unwary though. She came for food for the hive and became food for the spider. Such is life to one, death to another.
And flies do join the banquet, never far from a feast. No more than providing for young yet … to be … you might think her a beast.
Being dead, no good for a bee. Or is death something else than a little body bent to spider queen. Coup de grâce complete.
… and again.
She stayed the life of the flower, then moved on to the next one. Pretty soon she was in food again, the more abundant honey bee attending.
I helper her along, so she didn’t have to move far, or rely on wind for direction – casting a thread to the currents is how she travels.
She will probably stay on this one for a while, it having multiple heads still to open. Then the butterfly bush should be in bloom.
We’ll see, nothing is sure but the rising and setting of the sun, as long as there is witness to it.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Mother’s Return …
First sighting was on the butterfly bush. She had tacked a few leaves together to form a shelter from which to survey.
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I am always careful not to disturb these small creatures too much but she wasn’t concerned at all, shifting only slightly.
And then I pushed in for a closer shot. Gotta take what is available, she may not be there for what is wanted. Things change.
At some point she climbed onto the sunflower and pulled a few petals over her, to guard her from the world of birds and things.
Upside-down doesn’t seem to bother her, she is just as agile as long as her feet touch something solid and her web holds.
She has no interest in those tiny creatures, hardly worth the effort to capture it seems. Waiting for the prize, a honeybee perhaps.
But not today, that I saw anyway. No doubt she will catch a meal to suit her needs, or she dies. It’s only a matter of nature.
She came with the rain, probably not the same one as – BEFORE.
Out of nowhere she appeared, on a butterfly bush that is two or more weeks from flowering, after a long slow spring.
I noticed her only because of the crumpled looking leaves. How she got there, and so big already, I don’t know. Abseiled in perhaps?
Then, next day, six feet distant, I found her on the sunflowers, where there would be more opportunity to exercise those fine tuned survival instincts.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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