I have just completed the settings for the five most recent videos which Steve and I uploaded last night. They include a new-for-the-project species of rodent and spider. Until I resume filming, there won’t be any footage from which to select fresh videos.

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 picked up my new glasses, after only having had my eyes tested on the Monday. Presumably the lens maker isn’t as busy as usual because of the pandemic. Talking of which, I was fortunate to have the cataract operations before elective surgery was halted, so that hospitals could focus on the pandemic. My eyes were tested exactly  four weeks after the second operation. The first was performed two weeks before the second. By the time of the test, my vision had recovered to how it had been before the operations. I had not felt colour-deprived with the cataracts, but after they were removed, the world was brighter and more vibrant. The main benefit post op, was that reading and writing without glasses were restored to how they had been before the cataracts took hold. However, my new distance lenses had the greatest impact of all because of the clarity of detail, which I had not known for years. It was revelatory.

During the weekend I completed a questionnaire about, inter alia, my project, why I came to Australia and a day in the life of Peter Kuttner, for a local filmmaker who contacted me via mutual friends. She graduated from film school a few years ago and is putting in a submission to a funding body charged with commissioning a short documentary about inspirational older Australians (not that I consider myself to be one). Is my age catching up with me? We will see what happens.

Ever since the removal of a large tree and adjoining vegetation from one side of the drive, I have bemoaned the absence of abundant moths at the garage, though other factors, such as the prolonged drought, have played a far greater part than the missing vegetation. Since Christmas, we have enjoyed frequent rain, which has revived gardens and trees and filled water courses and rainwater tanks. The drought was such that the grass didn’t grow and the stressed trees covered the ground, including the forest floor, with their shed leaves. But  moth numbers at the garage were slow to reflect the rainfall. Today, there were more than I recall ever having seen. Overwhelmingly, they were small, pale brown geometrids. Numbers flew off as I approached to take photos. The night had been warm and humid, as had previous nights with a good showing of moths, but nothing remotely like this.

I am on the last day of a six day course of antibiotics to combat a mystery infection I picked up god knows when, god knows where.  Last Monday week I woke with a slight temperature which returned to normal the next day. The following morning, I felt a sharp pain on the shin bone of my left leg, but didn’t see anything untoward. Fortunately, I had a doctor’s appointment the day after. My GP confirmed that the leg was infected. There were small blood bursts below the skin and the leg was swollen. Last week’s pain had gone. I took the antibiotics but couldn’t see any change for 5 days. Because I am shortly due to have a cataract operation, I urgently wanted to see a doctor. My new appointment was for today at 11.30 am. The doctor confirmed that the infection had gone, but the swelling worried her so she sent me to have a scan for a blood clot in my lower left leg. For a few hours the implications were scary to contemplate, until the scan result proved to be clear. But some critter or vegetation had it in for me. The leg remains swollen…. Read Complete Text

On my walk this morning I was startled by a crashing sound. Looking around I just caught sight of a kookaburra smashing into a hedge, emerging with a small, dark snake, wriggling in its beak. The bird flew onto a tree branch a short distance away, where I was able to observe it for several minutes. The snake tried to wrap itself around the bird’s head while held in the vice-like grip of the very large beak which is a distinguishing feature of the species. I eventually saw that the victim was a juvenile green tree snake. Adults can grow to a length of two metres. The bird suddenly flew to the ground in the garden next door, the better to overpower the snake by bashing it on the hard surface of the car port.

As I set out on my morning walk, a fallen bunya pine cone stood out on the grass of the park opposite my unit. Just an hour before, for the first time in months, the grass had been cut. Otherwise the cone, large as it is, would not have been as visible. I have never known a cone to fall in December. Usually on the mountain, they fall in the second half of January and in February. A group of bunya pines graces the side of the road further along my route. Two of the trees grow on each side of a drive at whose entrance the property owner was adjusting a shade cloth. I told her about the cone in the park and she showed me three which she had found this morning. A very fierce wind blew all yesterday, which may have dislodged the cones. There are several other bunya pine trees in the park, yet I only saw the one cone. Because we are enduring a severe drought, all the vegetation is stressed. The trees are shedding leaves as never before and I suspect that is why the bunya pines have shed cones early in December…. Read Complete Text

This morning I posted a USB with the latest 23 species videos and a corrected version of ‘The Rainforest at Night’, part 1, to the NFSA. The NFSA has the vast majority of my 568 videos on Vimeo, which are accessed on this site. Because I have been busy with my book, I haven’t filmed much since February, so it will take  a while for me to build up footage for further videos.

Jeff Wray emailed me confirming the safe arrival of the USBs  with the latest batch of 125 species videos for the NFSA, bringing the total in their collection to 511 videos.