Daylight Robbery
The bee hotels I have under the veranda, where they are protected from the heat of the sun and the torrential summer rain, are often under attack by other creatures looking for advantage.
Here is one parasitic wasp laying into the nest of a Orange Tail Resin Bee, you can just see the ovipositor behind the middle legs in two pictures. Through it she deposits an egg which feeds on the bee larva and probably the store left for its initial growth.
It’s the way of nature that one thing depends on another for its sustenance. When one piece of the picture is missing there is a deficiency but things invariably balance out in the big picture – just as well for us most destructive humans.
And then there was light … as one more wasp is created, by design.
A wonderfully mysterious nature.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Wild Being
Bee on my stick …
Click on pix to see bigger version in new tab.
Climbing to the sun …
Have only seen those ‘cutters’ behind the mandibles on a Carpenter Bee
I hadn’t been to Venman for a while and didn’t take my camera on the walk, thinking to just enjoy the cooler wet woods without consideration for a picture, of anything – it had been raining much and I had no mind for hunting.
Along the way the path was flooded and I noticed a commotion on the water’s surface and could see plainly a large insect was in trouble, on its back, wide wings keeping it from sinking, so I offered my stick and it gripped it without hesitation.
It wasn’t the first time I had done such a thing and knew it was only a matter of time before she was recovered and away on the wing, it being a bee’s nature to busy itself. It climbed a few inches and stopped, resting, recovering from its watery struggle.
Walking on I gave it time to wake up and it didn’t move again so I kept it in my shadow, protected from the wind, as I slowly made my way back to the van, where the camera was, and set her up on a dry surface in the sun and took a few shots.
She soon got moving again and after a while tried to fly away but without success, launching into the air but unable to sustain flight for more than a couple feet. I picked her up again and she made use of different surfaces, bark, stone and tree.
I didn’t see at the time but in the pix it is apparent she was damaged on the upper right eye and head, it was a windy day, which would account for her crashing to the water.
Falling back to earth a few times I kept her from the ants and eventually set her climbing a tall tree into the sunshine, was where I left her.
Eventually we’ve got to leave the wild to be …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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The Company Of Bees
Between the recent heat of the day and the rain and wind at night there are few opportunities for shooting Blue Banded Bees. It’s only when they are either feeding or sleeping that they are at all approachable.
During the day they rarely stop for more than a second or two at a flower and I don’t have the equipment for that. So I walk the garden at dusk listening for the tell-tale sound as they approach and select a place to sleep for the coming night.
Sometime during the night I will set up a shot or two and the primary concern is to not disturb them. If they wake they will fly into the dark and may be lost to the night hunters, of which there are many.
It’s why the bees sleep where they do, gripping a stem off the ground and at the end of a branch where there is no through traffic or passers by, to increase their chances of waking in the morning – they are not stupid.
And if a predator does happen upon one during the night it will automatically splay its legs in all directions to make itself bigger and would be a bit thorny to eat, with its hooked feet the first contact.
Once the morning comes they are up and about before any other bee I know, hardy little creatures, bullets of blue and red and black darting about, with purpose.
Even when it’s raining heavily they are up and about, a pleasure to watch, the way they control their flight in tight spots in their search for food – known to favour blue flowers.
Bees being bees … not to be confused with butterflies …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Old Moulds …
break … eventually.
It can be difficult to break from the diktat of previous form. So I thought, again, to show some of the variety of the garden, for your viewing pleasure – and mine. Outside my usual ‘sets’, here is a small sample of the wondrous creatures that come and go in the usually unseen world at our feet.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Treasure Ant
And a little treasure they are, caretakers of the dead, diggers of the soil. Indispensable pieces in the great Earth machine.
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It’s that time of season the only creatures around are ants, or so it seems. The passion fruit vine, with its highways and byways and the wonderful smell of exotic flowers is home to many kinds of ants, all patrolling for a bite to eat, a little nourishment. The only way to get a shot is to stop one and food does the trick.
I’ve watched an ant eat until it looked like bursting, its abdomen swelling to accommodate the liquid gold. A little honey stops an ant in its tracks, some feed until it can take no more, and off back to the nest it goes – I suspect – to share the treasure. Sometimes with an initial stagger from the unaccustomed weight and balance.
We do it too, with all the momentary treasures of a single lifetime, absorb and distil the essence to eventually radiate as our light or wisdom – after many years climbing around on the vine of experience, you may have noticed.
Whether the treasure is real or illusory, when it’s gone we move on, ever in search of the next de-light. Until the endlessness of the search is seen to be the grand delusion.
Then now is all there is, no loss or need to search, no ignorance nor despair. No need to experience any more, no need, no need.
Still, inside, there is the nourishment of the simple good, no thing, no form, no problem.
And the reality of the moment grows in focussed attention.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Beyond The Rain
In the last week the daily temperature has gone from mid 30’s to mid 20’s (C) with the end to end cloud cover and rainfall over this part of the earth. Very comfortable, very wet. The plants love it too, after the scorching heat of the fiery summer sun.
Driving in the rain is not unlike the practise of being, having to look through the movement of form to see where I want to be, and stay on the road that works to get me there, instead of focussing on the splashing on the glass or thundering sound on the roof.
The trouble comes with distraction, to the focus of attention or intelligence, to the point where I become identified with what distracts and no longer see where I want to be.
If I am distracted enough by the rain it becomes all there is and I could end up drowning in it.
Recovery is always possible though, by focus on where I want to be – in clarity.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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Forbidden Fruit – Fly
An area of the front garden has been home to a growing experiment for a while now. Some successful, some not, it’s trial and error learning.
At first I was hand pollinating the melon flowers but gave up after it became apparent the plant – and garden – had a mind of its own and would produce what it will.
Of four or so developed melons one made it to the fridge and the others served as a nexus of community for the gardens tiny intelligent inhabitants. A busy metropolis for a while.
The fruit fly are a wonderful looking creature and they decimate a soft fruit crop in days. Once the melon’s skin was broken by the caterpillars the flies were in and it was over for the fruit, and the gardener …
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Where there is gain there is loss, and suffering if there is attachment to either. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.
Who still needs it … hands up.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Dear Bee …
All of a sudden it went from hot to cold and you were caught out in the rain, needing heat to fly, weighed down by water. Lucky there was a flower to land on and wait out the weather.
When I saw you the rain had been falling for a day and you looked on the verge of drowning but I’m sure your kind are no strangers to such events, or the hunger that drives.
Regardless, I arranged some background to shoot against and after a while the flower you gripped so tight fell from the stem to the earth, naturally worn out, dead.
So I picked you up, still gripping the dead flower, and brought you to where we could both relax and recover. It was easier for me to shoot from a stool and you dried out, good all round.
After a while you started to move and flex your wings, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before you were away on the breeze, rain permitting, in search of your fulfilment, as a bee.
And as I watched that’s exactly what you did, took to the air, and I saw you fade to the distance, a small dark dot becoming nothing quickly – disappeared from sense, no more in mind.
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I went for a walk in the garden, camera in hand, and there you were again, or a brother or sister, feeding on the same kind of flower, still a little tired from the weather event.
Climbing, not flying, from flower to flower, so unlike a bee, I waited until you were occupied, focussed, and moved in for a shot, or two, and I was lucky.
We were lucky, I got some pix, you got to live a little more, eat, then fly away, doing bee things.
Not a bad day’s work at all, for a monkey and a bee.
On the earth that makes and breaks us …
… what we are and what we are not.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Denizen …
Occasionally I see these huge beetles flying around the garden, with a loud buzz to match. They do command attention.
The ones I get close to though are already stopped, such as the one pictured – I call them Leopard Beetles, for the markings – frolicking in the flowers.
It was climbing around one of the straw flowers, munching away on the pollen, so I took the opportunity for a few shots.
Others I have seen in the flowers of the garden have ended up as food for the Kookaburra or the Pied Magpie. Two who keep a close eye out for a morsel.
There seems to be enough to go around, for now.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Nature's Place 
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