The new dominant male in the area is Gandalf. Gandalf has an unusual grey coloured tip on his tail.
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| Gandalf - 10th April 2025 |
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| Gandalf - 27th April 2025 |
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| Gandalf - 9th July 2025 |
Looking at it more closely, it looks like the tip of his tail has a layer of white fur with a thin layer of black fur over the top, so it looks white from underneath and grey from above.
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| Tip of Gandalf's tail - 23rd April 2025 |
Gandalf is very gentle with humans and rarely snatches as food, although he will often hang over the gutter and make grabbing motions with his right hand to signal that he wants to be fed.
Gandalf was first seen early in April, around the same time as the previous dominant male, Laslo, stopped visiting, so I assume he has taken over Laslo's territory.
Grok also stopped visiting at this time. He was at the age where a young male will normally leave the area, but it's possible his departure was hastened by Laslo leaving. Although Laslo attacked Grok once when he was a baby, they later became friends - or at least as much friends as brushtails can be - and Grok would often give Laslo cheek.
Sprout is visiting and is in good health.
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| Sprout - 4th April 2025 |
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| Sprout - 6th July 2025 [Photo by Xesce] |
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| Sprout - 6th July 2025 [Photo by Xesce] |
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| Sprout - 2nd July 2025 |
Sprout no longer sleeps in any of the nest boxes but visits virtually every night, so she must have a sleeping spot nearby. I had thought that she might take over the territory that she and her mother Blossom used when Wink was still around, but when she visits, she approaches the house from a different direction and might instead have moved into her great-grandmother Sasha's old territory.
Sprout was seen mating with another new male possum, who has been named Zeke. I didn't want to intrude on her privacy too much but took one photo for the record.
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| Sprout (below) and Zeke (above) - 24th May 2025 |
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| Sprout (top) and Zeke (bottom) - 25th May 2025 |
Zeke is a very rufous possum. He took food from hand almost at once, but didn't hang around the area for very long. He didn't seem to get into any fights with Gandalf - although admittedly we only see a small fraction of what goes on in the garden. It was as if Zeke was Sprout's boyfriend and Gandalf was Blossom's, and they'd decided to leave each other alone.
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| Zeke - 24th May 2025 |
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| Zeke - 25th May 2025 |
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| Zeke - 25th May 2025 |
Blossom's baby continues to grow and anyone viewing the nestbox camera will see that he (the little one looks to be male) is becoming the usual little pest to his mother; climbing over her, jumping onto her and biting her ears when she is trying to sleep.
Over the last couple of days the baby has started to back-ride when leaving the box, but only for very short periods and is safely in Blossom's pouch by the time she approaches the house.
Blossom has been keeping her distance from the house most nights, and there has only been one photo taken of her since the last blog post. Her pouch, which is hidden in the photo, is very large and there is often a little tail emerging from it.
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| Blossom - 25th July 2025 |
Viewers of the nestbox cameras have noticed that a determined ringtail has been using the nestboxes. This ringtail has been named Rudy.
He (the ringtail appears to be male) first brought nesting material into Box 2, upon which brushtails started using the box. He was not deterred by this and went back to sleeping in the box whenever the brushtails were sleeping elsewhere.
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| Rudy bringing leaves into Box 2 - 10th May 2025 |
But recently, he got tired of this and built a second nest in box 8.
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| Rudy bringing leaves into Box 8 - 27th July 2025 |
I haven't managed to get any photos which I can definitely say are Rudy. There are quite a few ringtails around, and they never visit the house, so it's rarely clear who is who. Ahab, the three-legged ringtail, is still around. Mr Rogers, the one-eyed ringtail, was seen earlier in the year but not recently. These can be recognised from a distance, but there is at least one adult female and at least one adult male ringtail (which may or may not be Rudy), as well as a couple of now independent youngsters.
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| Ringtail possum, possibly Rudy - 9th April 2025 |
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| Mother and baby ringtails - 13th April 2025 |
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| Mother and baby ringtails - 27th April 2025 |
The brush turkeys Merlin and Tabitha are still around, and another female (possibly Saskia) has also been seen.
Indie stopped visiting some months ago. Indie had got the black adult plumage by that time and hopefully had decided it was time to leave the area.
Although Merlin has a large mound in the back garden, he has also decided to build another smaller one in the front garden. It's in the middle of an area which is only about 5m x 5m and right next to the footpath, although screened from it by vegetation. I suppose he knows what he's doing.
It's great to see new possums, though I'll miss Laslo and Grok. It's been really fun watching Rudy go from his investigations, to moving into box 2, to building his backup in box 8.
ReplyDeleteWith Blossom, do mother possums usually wait until their baby is older to bring them over to the house?
When the babies are very young, they don't back-ride for very long. Initially they'll get back into the pouch almost as soon as they leave the nestbox, but they stay on the back progressively longer each night.
DeleteSometimes it seems that the mothers deliberately keep away from the house until the baby is back in the pouch, but this stage usually doesn't last long and the babies are normally fairly young when they are first introduced to the humans.
I expect Blossom to bring her baby over some time this week. At first she might not stay long and/or the baby might quickly go back into the pouch.
There are two ringtails in the boxes! Both 2 and 8 have a small possum occupant, so maybe it wasn't Rudy who was moving into box 8.
DeleteThat was a surprise to see and I'm not sure what to think.
DeleteI noticed that last night at about 9:20 pm both ringtails went into box 8 together - until Gandalf arrived and scared them off - so it would seem they are related.