by ANNE WILKINSON.
This is an amazing, and for the natural world if not for we humans, an energy-rich time of year.
Hot and uncomfortably humid it may be, but the plants just love it. Trees are bursting into life, almost as if the bits remaining to them have been pushed into action by the cyclone.
Insects, many large and quite beautiful, like the varied butterflies and dragonflies so prevalent at this time, bumble around, sometimes colliding with one as one walks. What a privilege it is to have a Ulysses butterfly land on one’s shoulder, or a large green dragonfly perch on one’s hand. And in many places it is worth taking a second look, because all is often not what it seems.
On a young currajong tree in the garden, for example, what I thought was new growth was not one, but two, giant stick insects. They merged so well with the colour of the real twigs that to look away was to lose them. By next morning they were gone.
Hot and uncomfortably humid it may be, but the plants just love it. Trees are bursting into life, almost as if the bits remaining to them have been pushed into action by the cyclone.
Insects, many large and quite beautiful, like the varied butterflies and dragonflies so prevalent at this time, bumble around, sometimes colliding with one as one walks. What a privilege it is to have a Ulysses butterfly land on one’s shoulder, or a large green dragonfly perch on one’s hand. And in many places it is worth taking a second look, because all is often not what it seems.
On a young currajong tree in the garden, for example, what I thought was new growth was not one, but two, giant stick insects. They merged so well with the colour of the real twigs that to look away was to lose them. By next morning they were gone.
