Jack Hasenpusch emailed me a pdf of a chapter on camouflage and natural history, he and Paul Brock wrote for the book Camouflage Cultures, Beyond the Art of Disappearance. This was in response to a number of questions I asked him about spiny leaf insects, also known as giant prickly stick insects, Extatosoma tiaratum. The females can take a leaf-mimicking or lichen-mimicking shape. I had heard that the lichen-mimicking insects were instars which lost their lichen pattern and reverted to an overall light colour as adults. The pdf confirmed that the lichen pattern can be retained by adult females on rare occasions. The shape of the leaf-mimicking form is so different from the lichen-mimicking form that it is hard to believe they are the same species. I have filmed brown and green leaf-mimicking adult females on the mountain as well as an adult male and late and early lichen-mimicking instars.

Today I renewed the domain name for this website for another two years until May 17 2020. The cost increased by over 200% which led me not to renew a matching domain name which I thought might have some commercial value. A Chinese company once contacted me wanting to use it, but without making an offer, so I didn’t reply.

I have completed writing up the 949 video frames and photographs for 2017 which will be added to my image library in the collection of the Queensland Museum. The next thing is to put the images and the descriptive lists onto a USB for delivery to the Museum.

Steve and I uploaded a further five videos to vimeo, to add to the five we uploaded on the 13^th when we had to upgrade our presence to vimeo plus, because we had exceeded the permitted storage capacity for vimeo basic. These were the first new videos we have uploaded since May last year, having been otherwise engaged. There are a further twenty in the pipeline.

An email arrived from the Queensland Museum entomologist who has identified numerous species over the years. He was unable to offer a firm verdict on any of the four images of insects I sent him three weeks ago. But he confirmed that the leg being pulled up a large rainforest tree at night by a lone ant we uploaded on vimeo 8 years ago, was not that of a cricket, but of a spider. I have corrected the video settings and the website.

An email from Showrunner Productions in Perth arrived this evening – the third time they have contacted me. They are interested in using footage from my videos of assassin bugs for their latest series which focuses on Latin American animals. Typically, the email mentioned an urgent deadline while requesting high resolution files. I replied immediately refusing permission because the assassin bugs in my videos are Australian species.