After working through my albumsI I listed the final few new XMLs for the Encyclopaedia of Life (EOL), bringing the total number of taxa (species) to 148 since July 2014. The list is an essential pre-requisite for using the template created by Ben Sinclair from which the XMLs are generated with their taxonomic information, descriptive texts and links to relevant video frames and photos. Many of the species are already on my gallery pages at EOL as videos, but many will appear there for the first time. I generated all the new XMLs for birds and am waiting to hear if they are okay from site developer Andrew (only doing this once a year gives scope for error). Based on the to-ing and fro-ing of past experience, it will be a while before the XMLs are safely lodged with EOL.
Andrew put up the re-written and pared-down home page today. It summarises what I do and why I do it, plus where my work is preserved for posterity. Andrew’s insistence that I retain the original first paragraph had me stymied for a while because it precluded the use of the first person in the new material until I replaced ‘The’ with ‘My’.
Thwarted by the weather a week ago while trying to benefit from Mark and Dan’s availability during school holidays, we managed to do our first night filming of the new season. Robyn completed the party. Mark had opted for The Knoll National Park. The night was exquisitely still, if a little cool. During the day storms had raged to the North but spared the mountain. There was little activity except for a lone possum, some tube and trapdoor spiders and a few snails. The only subject worth filming was a group comprising a semi-slug and two snails eating a fungus. At one point the antennae of all three were twitching in the same shot.
This evening I worked with Steve on re-titling videos after a four week break because he and Paulina went on an overseas holiday to Thailand. It was the first opportunity to view his daughter Taylah’s finished video about me and my work for her school project about Australian identity. The video is titled ‘Home is where the heart is’ and at five minutes, is a minute over the required duration. Taylah filmed heaps of footage to choose from. Her shot selection was most assured. I enjoyed the video which consisted of me talking to camera inter-cut with shots of Steve and I working in his editing suite, me filming and a selection of the subjects I was filming. I hope she gets a good mark for her enterprise.
Stories about freakish delays in postal deliveries occasionally crop up to amaze us, rather like messages in a bottle washing ashore after an unbelievable interval. The postcards I wrote at Chief’s Camp in the Okavango on June 10 don’t quite come into that category, but it is baffling nonetheless that the card I wrote to my daughter-in-law’s parents in Brisbane which arrived today, took four weeks longer to be delivered than the card I wrote on the same day to my cousin in Hertfordshire in the UK. PS The third postcard finally reached its destination in Longreach on September 4.
In the morning I filmed a male Satin Bowerbird tending its bower in a bushland garden belonging to friends of mine. At one point a female appeared and I got brief footage of the two of them. In the afternoon I was on one of my regular visits to the ‘bird feeding’ garden and filmed Little Corellas, a galah and a Blue-faced Honeyeater.
This evening Steve’s sixteen year old daughter Taylah finished filming me for a school project on Australian identity for which she chose me and my very Australian biodiversity video archive. Taylah filmed Steve and I working on retitling videos for the National Film & Sound Archive and then interviewed me about how my work is being preserved for present and future generations of Australians. She and Steve came to my place on Saturday the 15th to film and interview me at my computer and filming at the Botanic Gardens where Taylah interviewed me some more. I saw some of Saturday’s footage which looked very good and eagerly anticipate viewing the completed video.
An email from my cousin Leila in London proclaimed the arrival yesterday (ie the 6th of August) of a postcard I wrote at Chief’s Camp on the 10th of June. It was postmarked Botswana, July the 29th . I had given it and the two other postcards I wrote on the same day, irrevocably up for lost. I now await news of their delivery in Australia.
Days when I film a new bird species are few and far between. The previous occasion was in April this year when I filmed a Marbled Frogmouth. On my rain-interrupted walk I noticed a bird I took to be a Topknot Pigeon feeding in a nearby garden whose owner provides food for large numbers of a variety of birds. I had heard about but never seen the pigeon (the sighting was confirmed when I consulted my Slater’s Field Guide to Australian Birds). The pigeon was fortunately around when I returned with my camera and I filmed it for say 30 seconds give or take, resolving to try again in the afternoon. This I did, but the pigeon was a no show. However I managed to add to my footage of Crested Doves and Blue-faced Honeyeaters before filming some Little Corellas, a species which I had seen on the coast but never on the mountain. They look like a smaller version of the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, but with less pronounced, white crests. I can’t recall when I last filmed two new bird species in one day.