Steve and I have uploaded another five videos. With the last tape in the camera I am running out of new subjects. This batch is worth mentioning because one of the videos contains rare real time footage of a female Satin Bowerbird at the bower with the male trying to win her over with dancing and a gift in its beak. She was present for 4 mins and 26 secs before flying off.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My vimeo presence in the last two years has resulted in me being contacted by people from all over the world liking my work. Most are videographers, but a number join vimeo because they are interested in a particular subject or because they maintain a video blog. Today I received a message from someone in Istanbul who joined vimeo yesterday as ‘Best Quality Mushroom’, liking my ‘Tree Mushroom’ video. Earlier this month I received a message from ‘Days of Disorder’ a video blog maintained by a Spanish person based in Berlin who liked a moth video of mine.

This a.m. I collected the two 64 gigabyte USBs which I sent to the NFSA with 215 HD species videos in April, from the post office. Steve and I are working our way through re-titling the SD videos, so in due course at least one of the USBs will be making the return trip to the NFSA.

Steve emailed  Dave Allen at the State Library to tell him that he has put the data files for HD Tapes 81 to 100 on the hard drive awaiting collection. I supplied the contents lists which have been included.