I delivered two books to one of my retail outlets on the mountain. Bookshop sales have been less affected by the pandemic than sales to libraries, although the lock-down in Queensland didn’t help. Thankfully I had an excellent Christmas. Libraries usually order just one copy, whereas bookshops order multiple copies.
The tickets for my covid-delayed flight to Longreach on October 8 were emailed to me by the travel agent. I’m greatly looking forward to the trip and the prospect of C40% dry heat. The price is $250 more than last year.
Six weeks after dropping off the memory card with the latest footage, Steve and I got down to work at his place for the first time in months. We assembled five videos and captured stills from the footage plus additional stills from footage of a golden orb spider aggregation, filmed in 2007 and 2008. Unfortunately the power connection to the hard drive containing the editing programme needs replacing, which prevented Steve from rendering the videos. Finding a replacement is not going to be as straightforward as we would like.
Today, I dispatched the last of a small flurry of orders from libraries I have received in the past month, after not contacting them for the three months since the end of March. I am prevented from approaching libraries in Victoria because of its second wave of infections, but the Northern Territory and Western Australia should be open for business.
Seeing is believing. This morning I photographed a lichen growing on a pvc reflective guide post next to a culvert. Lichens seem to flourish as readily on man-made as on natural surfaces. They are grouped in growth forms which describe their appearance. The most common, fruticose (shrubby), foliose (leafy) and crustose (flake-like) account for the majority of lichens that people are likely to see. It is estimated that 6% of the earth’s land surface is covered by some 20,000 known species of lichen. There are more than 3,000 Australian lichens around 15% of which are endemic.
I delivered another 3 books to Canungra Books & Art at a time when retail sales have been few and far between. At the end of June, the main bookshop on the mountain also received an order from the local Federal MP. Meanwhile, around the same time, I received an order out of the blue from a library supplier. Early this month I contacted Libraries ACT, who ordered a copy via the same supplier, which I dispatched yesterday.
The last thing I would have expected to see this morning was a frog, and at the garage where I find most of my moths. I had to cut my walk short to return home and fetch my camera. This encounter was a wonderful instance of the natural world functioning as gloriously as ever regardless of the pandemic afflicting homo sapiens. The frog is nocturnal and hides beneath fallen leaves, or burrows into loose soil during the day. This one may have been disturbed from its Winter quarters. Over the years I have encountered dozens on my night filming walks in rainforest, a preferred habitat of the species. This was the only one I have seen in daylight. The frog ranges from mid-coastal Queensland to mid-coastal New South Wales, with isolated populations in northern Queensland and Victoria. Length is 6.5 – 10 cm.
After a false start due to amended hours caused by the pandemic, I visited Canungra Books and Art, having left a message on the owner’s phone about my book in pre-covid days. The shop bought two books.
Although the Australia-wide corona virus lock-down is highly effective, it appears to be particularly so in Queensland. I am allowed my morning walk and visits to shops and even nearby friends. I don’t recall a more glorious or warmer Autumn in my 33 years in the country, with day after day of bright sunshine and deep blue skies. My walks continue to prove most productive at the garage. Today, and four days ago, I found moths which are new to my album. This morning’s was among only a handful present, which always enhances the thrill of discovery. Both were very small, yet their marking caught my attention and made me wonder whether I had seen them before. Both belong to the family Nolidae and are similarly coloured, but differently patterned. Were it not for the pandemic, the marvellous expert on whom I rely for species identification, would be on an extensive overseas trip and I would have had to wait until his return to write up an already extensive haul. He and his wife got no further than Perth, where they languished for a week or so before finding a flight back to Brisbane.