sammyisafuzzydog's Identifications

This is the famous Davie Poplar, approximately 350 years of age.

At dusk, hundreds and hundreds of Chimney Swifts swirl in vortex above, before darting into the hollow trunk to spend the night. An Eastern Gray Squirrel, however, awaits their arrival, fulfilling its classification as an omnivore. [see 3rd photo].

30 years ago, Dr. Jerome Jackson had amongst the slide set for his students of Ornithology, a photo that elicited primal gasps of horror and shock. The photo showed in gruesome detail an Eastern Gray Squirrel holding a male Northern Cardinal like an ice cream cone. The head of the cardinal had been devoured.

The memory of that photo sprang to mind when I espied the Eastern Gray Squirrel lingering around the hollow into which the Chimney Swifts would descend. And then it quietly slipped in to greet them upon their arrival.

Locking mandibles and legs in fairly robust wrestling without real aggression or stingers, an interaction (lasting several minutes) called 'mauling', is a common way two hornets from the same colony establish hierarchy to determine the dominant hornet: she'll release her nest-mate with no physical damage; fights between hornets from different nests, much more violent, often end with missing body parts!

For the other nearby Golden Reishi (Ganoderma curtisii), cf. inaturalist.org/observations/239864457
For the spider, especially photo 4 & highlighted in photo 6, cf. inaturalist.org/observations/239868422