Because of advancing age and early injury that result in the slow breakdown of the body, I make compensations or compromises to go on doing what I most enjoy as far as practical application of my skills, character and predisposition are concerned.

So, in the cool of the night, rather than the heat of the day, I have been making the best of what I know of the wildlife hear-abouts – capturing them while they sleep or are otherwise less cognisant of me and my approach for a shot.

Since finding them and learning of their roosting and sleeping habits a few years ago bee’s have been my favourite creature to image, especially at the dawn or dusk when the temperature is best for taking some time for getting the composition right – for my taste – especially the now little seen Leaf-Cutter bee.

I am long past chasing them…

Anyone who has been following my posts on this site will know I have worked at making the garden a place for the little ones to visit, maybe even stay and nest. You will know the endeavour has been somewhat successful, weather permitting.

The other day I went about clearing away a years fallen palm leaves and on the way got to see places I don’t usually go. At one of those places, coming to dusk, I came upon a band of bees hovering, landing, taking of and doing it over and over – as BBB’s (and others) do.

So I sat and watched a while and – it came to pass – the place is a nest of males, where they rest out the night. I had seen females looking for suitable nest sites during the day. I have only so far seen this roosting behaviour in the fields…

When he was a boy, Jonah Raskin’s father used to take them out down the beach at low tide,  and below the water line looking for clams. They’d occasionally fall into arguments with their neighbors, but his father — a lawyer — knew his business, the property line stops at the waterline. He also brought home perhaps another important lesson — don’t take home more than you need.

Jonah Raskin now lives on an old farm in Sonoma, and gleans from old orchard trees,  a neighbor farmer lets him pick what he needs from his fields, and goes out know and again for mushrooms.

Mushroom pickers delight in sharing recipes for their finds, but are notoriously secretive about their locations. Locations are jealously guarded secrets because people fear coming back to their spot and finding nothing left.

Leaving something behind is a big part of a foragers ethic — not…