Talk about animals knowing what's best for them. Today, after a couple of months not filming because of shot selection for the night footage DVDs, I filmed a pair of Tawny Frogmouths, perched on a vine up against the white wall of a house in Central Avenue, enjoying the Winter sun.

Last night, totally out of the blue, we had an intense hail storm. Fortunately the stones were just a bit larger than pea size and not damaging to vehicles. This cloudless morning I looked out of my kitchen window and saw a hail drift against the garage wall, perhaps 30cm deep. I filmed it from various angles, including close-ups revealing individual stones, and then, following a telephone tip-off, a field all the more white with hail because of the brilliant sunshine. The hail storm had cut an uneven  swathe through the northern part of the plateau with my home on its fringe. The hail on Tamborine Mountain featured on today’s tv news.

For a long time I have wanted to film Blue-faced honeyeaters. I have seen them in various parts of the Mountain. They are handsome birds and one can get quite close to them unless, as I discovered today, one is trying to film them. They were feeding on several stands of Red hot poker plants. I had seen the birds for the past few days on my morning walk.

I returned to film the many species of fungi growing in a sizeable area of mulch in the park opposite my home, having previously filmed a very large species there 10 days ago. Because of the variety of species I was filming for a good two hours. Which may have been why I noticed a set of lower dentures lying in the mulch, not far from the only picnic table in the park. I was mildly intrigued by their presence but left them in situ.

Jaap showed me an insect cluster on a tree in a rainforest patch being given some love and attention by Land Care. I returned with my camera and filmed what looked more like worms than caterpillars, writhing on the tree. I thought of caterpillars because I had seen them clustering on bushes in Bellingen, New South Wales, years ago.

PS I was subsequently told that they were Sawfly larvae. Perhaps that is what I saw in Bellingen.

I have been filming the flange roots of Yellow carabeen trees lately, initially in Joalah and MacDonald National Parks, today in Palm Grove. The roots can reach to 8m high or they can extend for several metres from the trunk. I was retracing the path we took on a night shoot a few days ago. Some fungi on a tree caught my eye. On closer inspection the fungi contained an interesting bug which obligingly performed for the camera. I was just about to move on when I noticed a dark line above the fungi which turned out to be a smaller specimen of a spectacular flat worm I filmed in MacDonald NP on a night shoot six weeks ago. I was able to film this worm travel half way round the tree trunk and descend to its base. The worm is one of those intriguing species which have so far defied identification.

Tonight was our 43rd night shoot. We have been maintaining a weekly night filming schedule since the start of the season in mid October. Because of a year or more of wet weather, the paths in the national parks have grown increasingly muddy. There was little doing until we were almost out of the Knoll on our way back, when we heard a rustling sound near the path. On examination it turned out to be an echidna jammed under a tree root. Conditions for filming were a bit cramped, but I managed to video the echidna backing out from under the root, steering itself to face in my direction and lumbering towards me blowing bubbles through its snout. It had only seemed like a few months ago that we saw what in all likelihood was this very echidna in more or less the same part of the park, but at the start of our shoot. Before I could set up the camera, it had hidden itself. What seemed a few months was in reality 1 ¼ years ago.

I have been filming a camp of Grey-headed flying foxes, Australia’s largest bat with a 1m wingspan and weighing up to 1kg, in Joalah NP. Their noise and the stench of their urine are pervasive. Their impact on the rainforest vegetation is noticeable. Even when they are roosting in the tops of palm trees, they are a fair distance from the camera. I filmed numerous adults cloaking young under their wings. Today a drop of bat urine hit my eye. They say urine is sterile. I had long wanted to film flying foxes, thinking it would most likely be at night because I thought they only visited the Mountain for food. It was only recently that I heard about the camp in Joalah.

It’s amazing how creatures can take hold of you. About a month ago Hugh Alexander noticed a daddy long legs-like creature when we were night filming in the Knoll NP. It had a tiny body and immensely long legs, but what was utterly remarkable was what we took to be eye stalks, many times its body length. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Well, today we saw 3 in all, at the same spot on rocks next to the path; the third on our way back. In the meantime we found out a bit about harvestmen, but nothing about the ones Hugh discovered. Harvestmen are arachnids (8 legged). Their bodies are unsegmented and the stalks are sexual organs. To totally dombfound us, the third specimen’s stalks had an equally long extension forming a right angle.

Maintaining weekly night filming sessions, we returned to the Knoll National Park. I filmed some intriguing small beetles, a large hunting spider devouring its prey and one of the strangest creatures I have filmed on our night jaunts. It was a daddy long-legs with huge eye-stalks and tricky to film because there wasn’t much of substance on which to focus. It was on an earth bank. Its second pair of legs were inordinately long. We’ll have to research what species it is.

I finally filmed a large millipede.

PS  The daddy long-legs is a species of Harvestman. We are still trying to find out which. Harvestmen don’t have a segmented body or spin a web, though they do have eight legs.