Dead squirrel and fungi

Today, to Gooilust nature reserve.

A nuthatch on a tree which has fallen down.

A blue tit high in a tree which is still standing.

Many fungi, including sulphur tufts. Meripilus giganteus.

Another tree has fallen into a canal. On the parts of the tree above the water, porcelain fungus grows. Did the fungi already grow on the tree before it fell into the water?

Nuthatch and robin sound.

1:50 PM. A loud thud. A red squirrel drops dead, from a tree to just behind a meadow fence. It is severely wounded on its arm. Which animal attacked it: a goshawk? a feral domestic cat? a pine marten (this rare predator does live around here)?

This is a Dutch red squirrel video.

Off to the warden’s house, built in the garden of Gooilust estate in 1823. The squirrel is photographed from various sides on the original site. Then, plastic gloves on, as the animal may have been sick. The squirrel goes into a special plastic bag. It will take some months in the laboratory before we will know more about the squirrel and the cause of its death.

At the Gooilust garden pond, a migrant hawker dragonfly.

Fly agaric mushrooms growing at the same spot as last year.

Fungi in the Dutch dunes: here.

September 2010. The Forestry Commission has carried out the first ever full survey of the Red Squirrels Reserve at Whinlatter Forest, Dodd Wood, Wythop and Setmurthy near Keswick as part of efforts to help conservation. Numbers of red squirrels were counted using 75 traps located within the reserve: here.

The groundhog, also known as the woodchuck or the mouse bear (because it looks like a miniature bear when sitting upright), first won its reputation as a weather prognosticator in 1886, when the editor of western Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper, one Clymer Freas, published a report that local groundhogs had not seen their shadows that day, signaling an early spring: here.