Revisiting the December 2015 night footage of the shiny leaf stinging tree, having captured images of it with Steve the night before last, resolved me to film it in daylight, which I did this morning. The last time I filmed anything was in January this year. I was able to get a shot of the menacing stinging hairs which cover the surface of the leaf. The tree can attain a height of 20 metres, but now, as then, the only specimens I saw were more shrub than tree. The leaves are far smaller than those of the giant stinging tree, which are almost as broad as they are long. These trees had grown considerably in the five years since I filmed one. Also, their leaves had been almost ‘eaten to the bone’ by various insects, and because they were further from the ground, I don’t think I was able to get a definitive shot of the leaves’ stinging hairs, which cause excruciating pain when brushed against skin. The pain can persist for days, weeks, even months, which is not the case with the shiny leaf stinging tree, though contact is best avoided. Mature giant stinging trees can be 35… Read Complete Text

Thank god one of my first decisions when I began videoing, was to colour code my film diary according to subject matter. This allowed me to swiftly keep track of the footage over the years. A few months ago, I submitted an image to illustrate an article about aggregating golden orb spiders, for one of the mountain papers, to which I contribute fortnightly. The image was a wide shot, showing 50 or more spiders against a blue sky. Unfortunately, it could not be printed because the spiders were too small to register and I had not selected any medium shots of the footage. Tracking it down was made easier because I knew I had filmed aggregations in 2007 and 2008. Since then I have not seen any, either here or elsewhere. The omission prompted me to revisit the footage and capture additional shots for future reference.

A week ago, a web article about Australian stinging trees caused me to check my site to confirm that it included two of the three species mentioned in the article. It only included the giant stinging tree. I was certain I had filmed the shiny leaf stinging tree one night, but I… Read Complete Text

In Australia, the first day of Spring is September 1. Today I photographed an oak tree which had burst into leaf, whereas other oak trees in the street displayed mainly bare branches. The tree is most likely an English oak, Quercus robur. Australia has no native oaks and those found here are ornamental and lack the stature of oaks where they are endemic.

Seeing is believing. This morning I photographed a lichen growing on a pvc reflective guide post next to a culvert. Lichens seem to flourish as readily on man-made as on natural surfaces. They are grouped in growth forms which describe their appearance. The most common, fruticose (shrubby), foliose (leafy) and crustose (flake-like) account for the majority of lichens that people are likely to see. It is estimated that 6% of the earth’s land surface is covered by some 20,000 known species of lichen. There are more than 3,000 Australian lichens around 15% of which are endemic.

The last thing I would have expected to see this morning was a frog, and at the garage where I find most of my moths. I had to cut my walk short to return home and fetch my camera. This encounter was a wonderful instance of the natural world functioning as gloriously as ever regardless of the pandemic afflicting homo sapiens.  The frog is nocturnal and hides beneath fallen leaves, or burrows into loose soil during the day. This one may have been disturbed from its Winter quarters. Over the years I have encountered dozens on my night filming walks in rainforest, a preferred habitat of the species. This was the only one I have seen in daylight. The frog ranges from mid-coastal Queensland to mid-coastal New South Wales, with isolated populations in northern Queensland and Victoria. Length is 6.5 – 10 cm.

Although the Australia-wide corona virus lock-down is highly effective, it appears to be particularly so in Queensland. I am allowed my morning walk and visits to shops and even nearby friends. I don’t recall a more glorious or warmer Autumn in my 33 years in the country, with day after day of bright sunshine and deep blue skies. My walks continue to prove most productive at the garage. Today, and four days ago, I found moths which are new to my album. This morning’s  was among only a handful present, which always enhances the thrill of discovery. Both were very small, yet their marking caught my attention and made me wonder whether I had seen them before. Both belong to the family Nolidae and are similarly coloured, but differently patterned. Were it not for the pandemic, the marvellous expert on whom I rely for species identification, would be on an extensive overseas trip and I would have had to wait until his return to write up an already extensive haul. He and his wife got no further than Perth, where they languished for a week or so before finding a flight back to Brisbane.

For several years I have regretted a decline in moth numbers at the garage, though last Winter this did not result in a decline in the number of new species I photographed. If anything, their number increased, which is fortunate indeed. This year, after two months of good rain since Christmas, the moths returned with a vengeance and subsequent good rain kept them coming. Even when that petered out and dry, sunny weather set in, the numbers have still been impressive – as good as they have ever been. Today I photographed an Australian moth which is the most widely distributed of any in my album. It occurs throughout the country, with populations in the centre, the outback, the ranges and the coast, because it feeds on over 100 plants and is regarded as a pest species on a number of crops. It has also invaded New Zealand. On April 7, I photographed a plume moth. The species is distributed in Africa, including Madagascar, and in east and south-east Asia, including Japan and New Guinea. In Australia it is found in Queensland. The moth seems to be a rarity.

I filmed the impatiens hawk moth caterpillar in March 1999. This morning, nearly 21 years later, I photographed the moth. It is found as various subspecies, from India through to China, Japan, the Philippines and Australia, where it occurs in every state and territory other than the Australian Capital Territory. The caterpillar attains a length of 7 cm and is more colourful and  spectacular than the moth. Wingspan of the moth is up to 8 cm. 

The 75 mm of rain we had for a few days during Christmas, made all the difference to our night walk in Palm Grove. I didn’t film a thing on the preceding walk because the flora and fauna were so distressed by the prolonged dry weather. And the walk before that yielded very little. Thanks to the school holidays, Dan was a welcome crew member. Penny Aagaard, her cousin Jenny Peat and Jenny’s brother and his granddaughter completed the party. The creek near the entrance had probably been refreshed by the rain, but was still almost non-existent. It was all the more remarkable that Dan spotted a large crayfish a short distance from the track. I filmed it without the tripod. I also filmed a net-casting spider whose abdomen displayed large patches of green – a feature I had not seen before – a large click beetle and an antechinus, which was a first for the archive, now in its 22^nd year. Both Dan and Penny attracted leeches. I was mercifully spared.

The new year got off to a splendid start for my project as well as for time spent with my family. This morning I photographed an Australian white ibis on the roof of a neighbouring building from my rear stairwell window. I had seen the bird a couple of days before on a nearby street corner and yesterday, in the park in front of my home. It was a specimen whose white body plumage had become brown-stained. I nonetheless suspected the bird was a white ibis, a species I had never encountered on the mountain, rather than a freak variant of the straw-necked ibis, flocks of which regularly visit here. The white ibis is a denizen of the coastal strip. Not only did Marg Eller, the bird expert I turn to for species identification, confirm that this was indeed an Australian white ibis, her husband Jeff sent me a spread sheet he had assembled of bird lists compiled by naturalists going way back. The only previous authenticated sighting was on a list compiled by the formidable Hilda Curtis in 1942.