Thankfully Mark’s Easter school holiday ran to a second week and it was as if normal service had been resumed when we filmed in Palm Grove. The air was still and mild. The exceptional haul was found within 500 metres of the park entrance, starting with a beautiful green beetle, followed by a flat worm (only the third I have filmed), a Sooty Owl (the first, a rare find) and the largest Stick Insect I have filmed at night. PS The Sooty Owl turned out to be an also rare Marbled Frogmouth which I had not seen or filmed before.

This was our first night filming since the 4^th of March and the one before that was on the 4^th of February. I just cannot muster a crew now that Hugh is no longer available and Mark only during school holidays. The time when we filmed every week, weather permitting, is becoming a distant memory. But enough of regretting lost opportunities. Tonight Mark was on holiday. I filmed a number of moths and a tiny frog. The glow worms were more abundant than at any other time this season. After substantial rainfall over Easter I wondered whether there would be sufficient water in the pool below the bridge over Sandy Creek for us to see the eel. No sooner had I expressed the hope than Mark caught sight of it. It didn’t like the spotlight and stayed under the bridge.

Our 114^th night filming walk was the first in exactly four weeks, thanks to a combination of rainy weather and the difficulty of finding a crew. Mark & Hugh are no longer regularly available and a new-comer cried off last week. Ideally I would like to film at night once a week during the season (from mid September to mid May).  This evening we returned to Palm Grove where I filmed a tiny snail on a palm leaf, a cage built by a moth larva in which it pupates and a pair of mating katydids. Valerie’s Austin Bug Collection website provides a succinct account of an act which appears to be quite secretive and which she has never seen. “The male transfers a large jelly-like mass called a spermatophore to the female. This has two parts: a small packet of sperm which is inserted into the female followed by a larger glob of nutritious gel, a nuptial gift that the female consumes to help with egg production.” For the statistically minded, this is my 350th post.

As the media is fond of reporting, the Gold Coast and its hinterland dodged a bullet as ex-cyclone Marcia veered out to sea instead of continuing its overland deluge southwards. The more than 200 mm of rain that fell on the mountain in a little more than 2 days was but a vigorous glancing blow. Yesterday I collected the camera from Steve. He was able to capture the six tapes, the time-coded DVDs of which I hope to pick up later this week. We agreed that I should use my back-up camera for establishing shots. Today I filmed more butterflies and used the back-up camera to film wide shots of the flowering vine which attracts them. I also used it to reprise wide shots of a small flowering plant growing out of the trunk of a maple tree and to re-shoot a definitive garden shed.