December 2011
A very merry Xmoth to all.
My Xmoth twee. (And yes I do know there’s a wogue birdwing in there.)
When Dave Rentz was in the US receiving his Ig-Nobel award, I took to doing a circuit of Buck’s backyard each night searching for examples of Blattodea - Dave has taken on the daunting task of writing ‘The Guide’ - to get him to hurry up and come home. (Dave news can be found on his erudite blog.) Well, as it happens I would never have found my own resident frogs without getting out there. Here are my favourites though the last cute little fellow was taken on a collecting trip to Emerald Creek falls.
Some highlights:
I’m putting a few of my unidentified ‘catch’ up front this Update in the hope that it will entice someone more qualified than myself to examine the Unidentified page. Help??
Many years ago we would sit on our verandah scoffing mandarins pinging off the seeds into the adjacent garden. There’s now quite a few citrus saplings poking their noses through the Clerodendrum and this year we’ve had our first crop . . . of Papilio. First it was P. ambrax and just in time for this Update, P aegeus, the Orchard butterfly.
We’re also awaiting the arrival of a Cairns Birdwing at Dave’s place.
Also at this year’s Blunt Edge portrait exhibition - Cairns’ answer to the Archibald where artist’s do portraits of each other when names are drawn from a hat - Paula Broughton shared a prize for her portrait of me - ironically, apart from Paula’s excellent work, it had to do with my looking like the quintessential Aussie bloke, something with which I cannot identify - and my portrait of Roland Nancarrow was chosen for the Best of Blunt 2011 exhibition on the Kick Arts feature wall at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Cairns during January.
Til next update, have a great 2012!
Cheers Buck
