Steve and I uploaded new videos for the first time in four months. Three were filmed at night. Among the subjects was Mark tickling the trip lines of the Northern Tree Funnel Web, the planet’s deadliest spider. It duly obliged with two strikes. Blink and you would miss them. Another video was of Tamborine Mountain Zieria in full flower. The shrub is up to 3 m high and is listed as vulnerable. It only grows on the mountain and nowhere else in the world.
This morning I photographed the fence post on the top of which the dwelling of the Log Cabin Case Moth was placed after it had been plucked from the adjacent picket fence as per the FILM DIARY entry of 16 April this year. Just six months later the top of the post was concealed by the new growth of a shrub. I have just added a photo to the ‘Other Fauna’ album. In other words, only the three least revealing of the eighteen photos I took of one of my project’s most fantastic subjects would have been possible, had I found the dwelling today.
We started the new night filming season in The Knoll with walk 134. Jaap and Lumart were the crew. Although the night was cooler than we would have liked, we were expectant of some night life because the weather last week was warm. I can’t readily recall a more felicitous season opening. I filmed a weevil, a moulting spider, a moth, a damselfly, a mayfly and, wonder of wonders, the dwelling of a log cabin case moth larva – the last three on a stand of young palms. The dwelling had seven layers and lacked the extensions of the one I photographed in April this year, which had eleven layers. I never expected to see its like again, yet barely six months later one turns up at night in our beloved rainforest. We saw female and male harvestmen, some very large spider burrows, several moths, a semi-slug, two leaf-tailed geckos, some beautiful fungi and two huge giant water spiders.
Tonight I loaded what, as far as I know, is my final tape. Sony no longer produce the tapes because current cameras record onto data cards. I purchased 10 tapes in May last year to tide me over until I was in a position to buy a new camera. The tapes are still obtainable, but I am now ready to buy the camera. The pressure is on for me to source it. Steve and I have eyes on a Panasonic 4K camera which we would like to trial, but are waiting to get hold of one from Steve’s trusty supplier.
I attended the successful launch of Japp Vogel’s book of a selection of his beautiful photos of the mountain’s flora and fauna, “Green Island in the Sky”. It was at a winery on the mountain. Many of the nocturnal subjects were photographed on our night filming walks. Jaap was the original spotlighter and fulfills the role currently when Robyn is unavailable.
For the second time this week I stopped to film three Masked Lapwing chicks on my way to the bower (see the post for 23 September). They were foraging in a small, unfenced orchard in my street. I had seen the parents for some time on a vacant block on the other side of the park in front of my home. The chicks were older than the ones I filmed in SD, which were being nestled by their mother. The chicks I filmed this week were very quick on their legs. Today I was able to get closer to them.
Years ago it was moths on a double garage I passed unseeingly on my morning walk. Today it was cotton plants growing in the front garden belonging to a lady long known to me whom I stopped to chat with, noticing a wooden box filled with cotton bolls which she and her partner had picked earlier this year from shrubs they planted four years ago. The shrubs had just been cut back, but I was told that when fruiting they grow well over a metre tall and fill out, so that it is a puzzle why I had never noticed their fluffy white presence. A bonus is that when in full leaf the shrubs are infested by jewel-like harlequin bugs. This post amounts to a timely and welcome corrective to my claim of looking out for the overlooked.
In five attempts since September 12 and after many hours of waiting and with a few near misses, I at last shot about 4 ½ minutes of footage of a female with a male Satin Bowerbird in its bower, located in a secluded garden. By near misses I mean occasions when the female was close but not close enough, calling volubly but remaining out of sight and this morning, hopping onto a branch overlooking the bower but then flying away before returning, touching down and remaining. This afternoon I watched the footage, which turned out well.
The Sony camera I bought in 2007 is now quite poorly and needs replacing. I have about two and one third tapes left of a range that is no longer being manufactured because modern cameras record onto memory cards. Steve arranged a loan camera, a Panasonic 4K (ultra high resolution) camcorder for me to trial. I collected it on September 10 and used it on 3 occasions, filming my usual subject matter, before returning it today. The camera’s 13x optical zoom lens is simply insufficient for my purposes. I require a 20x zoom such as I have on the Sony. I haven’t seen the footage I shot yet so I don’t know the camera’s picture quality.
For the first time since June I took some photos with my PANCAM and two months later than I would have liked, inaugurated the PANCAM 2016 B folder of my image library. The subject was close ups of the flowers of Zieria collina, a shrub which only grows on the mountain and is listed as vulnerable. Spring officially started on the 1st of September. The zieria bushes are bursting with flowers. I also filmed the flowers and am confident that the close ups are an improvement on those of the SD footage, though they won’t match the PANCAM’s.