In thanking Leigh Winsor for confirming the identity of a Flatworm, footage of which comprises a forthcoming video, I made the point that whenever I film a lone individual of a species I have not seen before, I tend to think that there is bound to be another specimen somewhere, but where is that somewhere, I wonder. Which leads me to thinking about what the mountain’s population of a given species might be. How many Rainbow Lorikeets, which are plentiful, for instance, or Great-barred Frogs, of which we see many at night. The mean range across Australia of Short-beaked Echidnas is 40-60 ha. The one I filmed in the Knoll National Park could have been one of a pair or three, given the park’s roughly 127 ha area. The White-banded Noctuid Moth was the first spectacular moth I filmed. I did not see another for several years. Then I started to see them regularly and once filmed a group of 4 on the Central Avenue garage.
Following our telephone conversation last week, I emailed Simon Smith of the National Film and Sound Archive today, summarising our discussion regarding providing data files of our Vimeo uploads for the 5 ½ years to the end of 2014. The NFSA has all my edited and scripted content. The vimeo footage is edited for visuals and sound. Much of the material will be new to the NFSA. I currently have 203 videos on Vimeo and have compiled an additional 14 which Steve and I will be working on next week and beyond.
An email from Chris Taylor, who is based at Curtin University in Perth, arrived which confirmed that a frame I sent him yesterday was of a different Harvestman to the one he identified a couple of years ago. I filmed it in October 2013. He was only able to identify the family and pointed out that the group is long overdue a revision.
As flagged in my 8 April post, Steve and I completed work on Hugh’s video frames. So today I sent out the newsletter informing subscribers that the frames had been added to the AERIAL 2001 album. The views tend to focus on the escarpment with its gorges and shelf land, rather than on the plateau which are the main focus of Hugh’s aerial photos.
I have received emails from Melbourne IT reminding me to renew my domain names, starting 3 months out from the 17 May expiry date. I tried to renew them on line today, only to discover that the charge for each domain was $146, $6 more than I paid for both last time. I resorted to phoning and the upshot was that I renewed the domain names for $140 until 17 May 2016.
Today I sent out a newsletter announcing a new album called AERIAL 2001, the first since the launch of my revised website. I am an aerial photo freak. I just love the vantage point. The initial images are photos by Hugh Alexander. I intend to add Hugh’s video frames in due course. I advise using the Album in conjunction with the maps on the Tamborine Mountain Page.
Today I posted the RADF Outcome Report to Mark Paddick of the Scenic Rim Regional Council, my local authority. Apart from detailing what was achieved, the report includes a financial accounting of the grant monies. The deadline for completing the report is January 30. PS. On 21 January I was told that the camera parts will only be leaving Singapore on 29 January. To make a bad situation worse, I received an email today about the appearance of Scarlet Honeyeaters on a mountain property. I filmed Scarlets, rather badly, soon after I bought my camera in 2007 and have not encountered them since.
A neighbour of mine has a highly strung Welsh Collie called Bear who likes to rush up to the front fence, bark at passing cars or people and run along the fence in a vain attempt to round them up. His barking scatters the flock of Rainbow Lorrikeets squabbling at the bird feeders who regroup in a couple of trees in the park across the road. I love dogs, but don’t like being barked at when walking. Some time ago I discovered a way to stop Bear’s barking after putting up with it for years. I simply mouthed kisses at him as I approached and continued to do so until I had cleared the garden fence. Bear looked at me nonplussed, but silently. It seems I may have given shepherds a new signal to use. Thanks to the rush of activity on the RADF videos and the website upgrade, I have not done that much filming lately. Now that I have time on my hands and good summer weather, I am still minus my camera.
In July 2009 I was without my camera for a month because the tape mechanism seized. On 15 December, fortunately after I completed TAPE 77, the mechanism seized again. I had received a phone call from Ted Karamisheff about the arrival of a large flock of Top-knot Pigeons. I went to check them out but was unable to film them and they may well not be around when I get my camera back. Prior to both glitches the switch which operates the tape mechanism did not work properly. The lid would open, but the tape would not rise, so I would slam the lid shut and press the switch again. There was also a separate fault. The camera’s memory battery did not charge properly, resulting in me repeatedly having to reset the clock and other data displays. Today, I dropped the camera off at a Sony accrerdited repairer’s in a southern Brisbane suburb. Being without my camera in December and January is particularly annoying as Summer is the busiest time of year in the natural world. At least in July, our Winter, there isn’t much happening.