Eureka Productions from Sydney, got in touch about a wildlife series they are making for Animal Planet, with a request to use some of my possum video which they saw on youtube. I agreed, as long as I received payment for providing high resolution footage. Today, an email arrived stating that payment had been approved. The footage is needed to compare an Australian with an American possum. Both are marsupials, but they look quite different. I duly signed the licensing agreement this evening at Steve’s, and will email it and the footage to Eureka tomorrow or the day after.

PS The fee was paid into my account on 19 September.

Uploading the 500^th video on vimeo couldn’t be a more fitting subject for this, the 500^th  blog post. The video is of a melanic (black) golden orb spider, which I filmed in my garden. It is a variant of the dominant lighter-coloured form.

Last year, I filmed and photographed a cotton shrub growing in a front garden, starting with the flowers in January, then the pods and the first cotton boll in March and finally a cotton harlequin bug in early April, followed by a female tending her newly laid eggs two weeks later. I photographed the nymphs on the 3^rd of June, within a day of their hatching. The female never left her eggs for an incredible six weeks. At most, I counted ten bugs scattered throughout the shrubs at any one time, plus eventually, the hatchlings.

Noticing bolls on the shrub in early May this year, I crossed the road to take a look and was greeted by swarms of nymphs in various stages of development and plenty of adults, on leaf after leaf and crawling on stems, which I avidly photographed and filmed, returning for more photographs on succeeding days. Today I took another look and photographed a late instar female. There were more bugs than ever. I knocked on the door and spoke to one of the owners who admitted that he had never seen so many in the five years since he planted the shrubs.