My friend Robyn Ashwin phoned me to report a flock of Wompoo Pigeons feeding in a fig tree behind her house. The tree was not as big as the one next to Palm Grove where I filmed the Wompoos last July, so I was able to get better close ups this afternoon.
Last year we stopped our night filming on May 12. This year we are carrying on because the results continue to make it worthwhile, even if some of the creatures are hibernating. We continue to see possums and Leaf-tailed Geckos. Tonight, in Joalah, I filmed a spider securing its egg sac on a leaf suspended by a strand of web a metre from the ground. I then filmed a small snail which appeared to be growing a shell, although it had some of the characteristics of the semi/snail slug. Finally I got some good footage of the eel in the pool with the bridge. The water was much clearer than the first time I filmed the eel here. Of the golden orb spider there was no trace, just bedraggled bits of web. We arranged to film again in a fortnight.
I decided to film the golden orb spider I had filmed two nights ago in Joalah, when Steve took footage of me filming and Jaap talking about why he loves spotlighting. This was a species more common further north. The spider had been extremely active at night. Now it was motionless in the middle of the web. Nearby was a fallen, seemingly dead branch, several metres long, sprouting new growth, which I filmed. A bonus was a male and female Log Runner, a medium sized ground-foraging bird, which I filmed in the undergrowth.
I was at the Knoll National Park to film some fungi I had noticed during our night filming a few days earlier when I saw a lace monitor in the picnic area on the look out for scraps. He was a large specimen and I was able to get some good shots of him patrolling the open ground. The monitor did not have things all his own way. A number of scrub turkeys were also after a feed and one repeatedly went for the monitor’s long tail, pecking at it viciously, so that the monitor formed his tail into a horizontal fiddlehead shape to make it a harder target for the scrub turkey. I didn’t film enough of this drama. I went in search of the fungi and only noticed them on my way back.
On February 23 I filmed a pair of ducks with three ducklings on a temporary pond created by a storm-fed spring which had filled overnight. I pass the pond on my daily walk and kept my eye on the duck family. I was amazed that the ducks had committed their brood to this pond. Today I filmed just 2 ducklings; one had perished. They were away from the pond, near the property boundary and had grown considerably. I moved closer to them whereupon they and all the other ducks flew over the fence and did not return. We have had good wet seasons for the past two years, culminating in a record-breaking 354mm in 24 hours on the Mountain on February 6/7.
Tonight we filmed in Witches Falls National Park for the first time. It takes longer to get to the rainforest proper, but we felt we should at last try our luck there. The first creature I filmed was a Giant Barred Frog, regarded as endangered. Not surprisingly, I had never seen the frog before. Later we saw a Rough-scaled Snake, one of a handful of the Mountain’s dangerous snakes. It obligingly stayed still in the vegetation close to the path. Unfortunately Jaap’s spotlight was playing up so I only had a limited opportunity to film it.
For the first time since I started using my HDV camera, I was able to film an intriguing event in the form of a host of yellow butterflies attracted to the yellow flowers of a native tree on which they apparently breed. I had never seen so many of the butterflies. In the last few years I only ever saw four or so, but now there were a score or more.
After dark we went to the Knoll National Park, with a storm rolling towards the Mountain from the west. We reckoned we had an hour before the storm arrived and so it proved. Numbers of Great Barred Frogs rested on the path as if in anticipation of the rain. We were lucky to encounter a Brown Tree Snake taking its time to negotiate the path. On our way back to the entrance I was able to film a Giant Panda Snail eating a fungus.
Late in the afternoon I stopped to talk with a couple of ladies who have guided me to some excellent subjects for filming, when I noticed a pair of White-headed Pigeons perched on a power line. These birds are not that common. It was years since I had filmed one, high up in a tree, and partly obscured. A man who lived in the street explained that the birds were attracted to the birdfeeder of a nearby house. I decided to go and get my camera only to find that the birds had gone. However, within moments of my arrival one of them returned to the power line in front of the house. I started to set up, but the bird flew out of sight onto the house’s verandah, only to reappear on the top rail of the balustrade, allowing me an excellent shot. This is a large bird as are a number of Australia’s other pigeons.
My second visit to film Golden Whistlers from the living quarters of a house next to the Wild Garden. The house is raised on poles, so that the camera was on a level with the birds, who either perch on a wild tobacco tree or a more leafy White Bollygum tree. I had long lusted after this very pretty bird with its beautiful, full throated song. The male has a bright yellow underside, a black head, a black collar beneath a white throat, and olive green and black wings. The female has a white underside and fawn head and wings.
Night filming at the Knoll National Park. Jaap had fitted a new battery to his spotlight. Olle Bakker, on a visit from Sweden where he now lives, had carried my tripod in the rainforest when I was filming the original archive and took on the job for old times’ sake. This was his first experience of night filming. I filmed beetles, a ladybird, a Brown Huntsman spider, a cricket, trapdoor spiders and a Brushtail Possum.
