During the first week back Ali our school gardener found a Phascogale at school.

For those of you who don't know much about our Australian mammals the brush-tailed phascogale is a small often shy mammal.   They live mostly in the tree tops nesting in hollow tree limbs.

Mostly they eat insects but they are known to also eat nectar and small mammals and birds. They are due to start breeding in the next few weeks.  The males have the unfortunate experience of dying by the end of the mating period.  It is thought that this benefits the females and offspring by reducing competition.  The females generally only live for about 3 years.

A weird fact is that they can turn their hind limb 180 degrees.  This makes them very agile. They are very cute and we are all very excited that we have seen one at school.