Brown-backed Honeyeaters in your face

 Hanging around nests for photographs isn't cool but when Brown-backed Honeyeaters (Ramsayornis modestus) start setting up house smack dab over the middle of the main Tyto entry track, well, what can you do?

Takes a bit more effort - and sets up more interesting images - to catch the bird at work elsewhere, above stripping nesting material from a small paperbark.

And here's another BB up a bit too close below the Tyto hide today.
Click pix to enlarge    

Cockroach under the bark

Roughly 100 paperbarks sacrificed small patches of trunk cover to uncover this cockroach, which I cannot for now identify. Not that I was seeking cockroaches. The great paperbark strip is an attempt to reproduce a particularly attractive pattern of underbark, which has the appearance of a fine silk.

But what nature and strong wind once produced has proved impossible to replicate. In the process, I've found two big centipedes - avoid their bites, say the guides - many huntsmen, one wolf and assorted smaller spiders, and a few tiny swift black bark-hole munchers.

And the one cockroach. Which superficially resembles Periplaneta americana about the head and in general shape, though a bit smaller at 30-35mm, and with green rather than red about the back. But unlike P. am. likes deep, dark rainforest. I can add that it doesn't like anything about human hands, doesn't mind strong light and doesn't run for it.

Paperbark bursting its seams

Change of focus with a wind-stripped paperbark that looked to be bursting out of its skin. As I walked by the tree I could almost feel it calling out to be photographed. Doesn't happen often - and usually I lack the gear to do the chance justice. But I'm learning - rather late in life - to listen better to nature.