1 March 2010

An email came from Dave Rentz : Any interest in a night sheet on the Toll Road?

Buck: Sounds like the first line of a good story.

So, Dave picked me up on a Saturday afternoon at 4pm and we drove out along Black Mountain Road - yes that road that features on so many an entomological species card - until we reached Toll Road. This was a road built by a developer called Quaid back in the 80s. It linked the Captain Cook Highway on the coast to a proposed development on the northern Tablelands at South Edge, complete with the largest artificial lake in Queensland. No one knew about the lake - no approvals - until it was discovered on a satellite photo. The development was never approved and Toll Road just sits there with the odd gate across it. But I digress.

Two sheets were rigged up. I’m not allowed to show you these as Dave says Ted Edwards - apparently the doyen of night sheets - would only give him a  C -. But there was this little waterway nearby and it gives you an idea of the country - eucalypt scrub.

My catch of the night, only noticed as we were packing up, was this Donuca orbigera, sitting on the trunk of the tree from which our sheet was hung.  Earlier in the night I’d chased a more battered specimen - not surprising given it couldn’t keep still - around the sheet for a half an hour trying to get a good shot.

But D. orbigera is surprisingly not my moth of the Update. That honour goes to this big beauty which came right into my garden at home the night before the Toll Road adventure.

I knew it was an Erebus but which one? At first I thought it was terminitincta - ok not quite matching the one on Australian Moths Online but I’d photographed a couple of crepuscularis with variations so . . . But it was Don Herbison-Evans site which put me straight. It is the female crepuscularis -  no white patch on the costa of the hind wing which distinguishes it from the similar terminitincta according to Ian Common in Moths of Australia. I waxed lyrical about her - 123mm wing span - for days causing Eve to describe herself to her friends as the wife of a ‘moth tragic’.

And because it’s been a time for spotting some great new spectacular moths I’m including a runner-up as well, Praesos mariana. See I am a moth tragic!

My first artistic endeavour for the year is for the KickArts Insiders Exhibition themed around ‘Momentum’. Themed group exhibitions are common - give us whatever you like so long as it conforms to the accompanying rave which means you can give us whatever you like. ‘Momentum, it’s what gives you the ability to move ahead. It’s about new ideas, new thought and debate, surging ever forward, growing, learning. It’s thinking about your space, your environment, the issues that affect you and you effect (sic), how you relate to your world and consequently move through it. What drives you? What gives you your momentum? Art doesn’t stand still, let’s see where it can go . . .’ See what I mean? Give us whatever you like but no bigger than 250mm x 200mm. My entry is Spinning with Genus Clytoscopa.

Eve’s entry is Tag Cloud: Facilitated Whiteboard for Larry.

I am still deconstructing Dawkins but should have something ready for the next Update. At this stage of consideration things are looking distinctly heretical.

Til next update

                                                                                                            Cheers Buck