Spider Mates
A delicate operation, he delivering his seed while avoiding becoming a nourishing meal.
*Click pictures for closer view …
Daring fellow … perhaps instinctively balanced between survival and reproduction imperatives.
She, being relocated on a stick as too close to the orange tail resin bee hotels.
He is content in his own web, waiting on an unlucky visitor to the butterfly bush. Gotta keep his strength up.
St Andrews Cross spider they’re called. The big colourful female and the relatively small male.
She sits in her web unmoving, he approaches from the other side, the web a barrier and carrier, wary for his life.
Some spiders eat their suitors after mating, food for potential spiderlings, these are probably one of those. Nature is savagely practical.
They reside in different parts of the garden, within their own webs, sitting without anxiety for what may be. No thought for any past or future.
Some spiders must die of hunger this way, become food for another predator, or travel for food and a mate, as they do, fearlessly though no doubt instinctively cautious.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Anomaly …
After the feast of butterflies, butterfly scales evident, appetite filled and unmoving for a while.
*Click the pictures for a closer look …
Along came a weevil, looking to sup on the butterfly bush nectar, the spider ignored.
Perhaps oblivious to the nature of the spider, weevil went exploring under her.
Or could that be a baby spider … I don’t think so. :-)
After the butterflies came and went this spider was seen with evidence of eating them, butterfly scales around its face.
Along came a weevil the spider ignored, perhaps no longer hungry enough to move. Or weevils don’t taste good to a spider.
I don’t think the spider thinks the weevil is its baby, or the weevil thinks the spider is its mother.
Just one of those things that happen in nature, apparent anomaly.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Silk Traveller
Running to and fro around the dried orange on a stake in the garden. Inspecting for what, who knows.
*Click on the pictures for a better view …
Raising his abdomen into the air he casts his sticky thread, adventuring into the unknown …
Not once into the darkness, but more. What could be his criteria satisfied … does it feel right?
Then at the other end he rests, how long for who knows … Not long, work still to be done.
There are many ways creatures get around, walking, flying, hopping etc. These spiders use silk.
He climbs to the highest point on his map and casts a thread of silk into the dark night, in his search for food and a mate.
First he thoroughly inspects his platform, running around with no apparent purpose, then raises his abdomen into the air and spins a sticky thread.
Taken on the light breeze, there’s always some movement of air, it lands where it will and off he goes to investigate.
Where he ends up there’s no telling, he leaves and returns along the thread and casts again.
After a while he seems satisfied his destination is reached, for now, and rests a while.
But the threads are still in place, if he needs to return, and to mark where he’s been.
Diligent little thing, never tiring in his purpose.
Way to go …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Butterfly Ball
*Click the pictures, for the simple pleasure … then click (some) again.
The Caper Whites were the most numerous by far. It was their migration.
And so many other kinds showed up alongside them, like this Skipper, and others.
Jacaranda is raining across the country.
They came in their millions, these butterfly guys.
Dressed in white, red, blue and … on.
Dancing across the garden, supping as they went.
In waves, one week then two, they filled the air.
Some said it was an accident of the wind they came.
There was no food where they go. A terrible waste.
As with the Jacaranda flowering, right across the country.
I saw a dusting of the world by the magical, celebration earth.
It was east they danced and whirled, to the mystery.
Not west to the mapped mechanical.
There’s a world of difference.
Inside, that inner sense.
Of significance …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Cicada Day
*Click on the pictures …
Having just left the car on my way into the bush I stopped to have a look at a nearby tree and out of the wind a cicada landed on me.
Opportunity, gotta make the most of it, some things only happen once and they’re gone.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Blue Butterfly Bush
*Click on the pictures … Butterflies added below, caught fresh.
And of course a few butterflies. One finally stopped still long enough, a few minutes ago.
It’s the season once more and the flowers are blooming in a wave across the garden. Leading is the butterfly bush.
And quickly following is a migration of white butterflies, a host drifting, fluttering east. Stopping only momentarily to fuel up and rest at day’s end in a dark corner of the garden.
This remarkable dance of nature has been going on for days now and I have only seen it once before. Symbolic, I think.
The blue flower has had many other visitors already, that I know of, some of which pictured here.
For the pleasure of it. Keeping it as simple as …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Time Flies …
*Click on the pictures …
… so time for a few pictures.
The creatures are enjoying the garden. No threat, just the bounty of what is needed to live and die.
And no problem, each doing what it’s little mind dictates, instinctively.
But you can never rule out the impossible in a world of wonder.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Colours
Yellow Lynx on aromatic lavender against a blue sky. The sense of it …
*Click the pictures to view bigger versions.
A rarity, the sun went in and this little beauty was caught out. Without the heat she had to sleep.
The garden Fly after the rain, perched safely for the night on a closed daisy.
Crucifix Beetle is back, after a few months absence. A little shy at first but soon settled for the shot.
Long legged Weevil, on lemon world with orange moon behind.
Click-beetle, big eyes to see with, for the darkness they are active in.
Blue white … the colour of mind with nothing in it, nothing to understand anyway – doesn’t give up easy.
The shifting forms of nature after a day in the garden, rising as vines untwine and blossoms unfold, but inside.
Then there are the creatures that live on them, the forms as shape and colour, sound and position, outside.
A delightful smorgasbord of sense, represented for the pleasure of it.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Fly By Nite
Keeping those legs clean. What they do in the dark.
*Click the pictures for a closer view.
A little dew from a cold night.
Sharing a perch for the night.
Neighbours by night.
Night time on the daisies, next to the nasturtium.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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