Birds and mushrooms

Well, where to start?

I'm currently doing my first solo shift on the phones for the local wildlife volunteers. People call to report native wildlife in distress. It's my job to direct them to vets or volunteer carers, or to organise transport for the animal to the same. There's a lot to learn and I am feeling very nervous about doing this on my own for the first time.

Winter is a relatively quiet time for calls, which is both a blessing and a curse for training. On one hand, I'm less likely to be flooded with calls, making it less pressure. On the other hand, that can also make it hard to get enough experience.

There are limitations on what the organisation will do. Feral animals are handled by the state rangers, as are kangaroos, wallabies and adult wombats. These last few are just too big and unpredictable for volunteers. While volunteers will capture and care for the larger species of possums, removal from roof cavities gets referred to commercial handlers. I think snake removals do as well; it's really not the time of year for that to be an issue.

Mostly, what we seem to get are birds. Halfway through my shift now and I've had just two calls. One was a probable male blackbird which had flown into a window and stunned itself. It recovered and flew off while I was on the call. ( CW: animal death )

I don't mind all the birds, though, since I'm already pretty decent at identifying species.

Moving from the animal kingdom to the fungi kingdom, we're having a record year for mushrooms. The La Nina weather patterns have brought a lot of rain and there have been mushrooms popping up everywhere. A lot have been poisonous species, such as Death Caps and the Fly Agaric pictured above. Not ideal, but the latter are very pretty. I keep thinking the fairies must be having a bumper year.