The Otway Fly Tree Top Walk - Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia

Sunset, and the forest becomes quiet. Yellow Robins are among the last day birds to call. Even in the hour of twilight, the nightshift begins to stir.

Boobooks leave their hollow-tree roosts, and call to each other, the rather melancholy “mo-poke” as much a part of Australian bush sounds as the kookaburras’ morning laughter.

In the shrubby mid-storey, Ring-tailed possums peep cautiously from their dreys, then climb into the foliage to search for soft leaves or blossom to eat.

The tallest hollow trees are home to the Yellow-bellied Gliders who venture out only after it is dark. They climb to the highest branch, then glide down towards their feeding place. As they do, they call out - a weird, gurgling, shriek that may be answered by another glider further down the valley.

On the ground, Dusky Antechinuses are already active. Mouse-sized, they are marsupials. They hunt over the ground, digging sometimes when they find a worm or grub in the leaf-litter. Beetles, spiders even baby birds will be taken with apparent relish. Their life span is short - just one year after leaving their mother’s pouch all the males will have died, the females rarely living more than two years.

In the sucker-growth at the base of the beech trees, the Otway Progradungula Spider moves out to its snare once it is dark.

Summer nights are full of life. Moths, beetles, spiders, centipedes and a host of other wildlife make the most of the brief warmth to complete their life cycles. It is their time to court, mate, lay their eggs or produce their young before the chill of autumn, then winter, sends them into their larval stage of slow, but steady growth.

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