Death in the Woods

While photographing the beauty of Beech woods, I started getting interested in the different forms and bark textures of the beech trees and the shapes of the trees. Where the trees were towards the edge of the wood they reach out long branches towards the edges, in the centre of the wood they had long branchless trunks up to the sky and only well-established trees on the lower slopes had the traditional spreads. They also show two bark types - I haven't been able to find out anything about why and how. I was photographing the final stages of the tree's life when I came across this dead stoat - no evidence of how it died.