ON THE WILD SIDE Fur ocious hunter
OUR hedgehogs are well and truly awake... and very hungry! Wet meaty cat or dog food, squashed dog biscuits or specialist hedgehog food can tempt them to visit your garden.
The name stoat apparently comes from the Dutch word for naughty, and you can see why. They look like an empty toilet-roll tube with stubby legs and a tail.
Stoats are possibly the world’s most widespread mustelid, living across Eurasia and North America.
They are also known as the shorttailed weasel (in North America) and the ermine.
Don’t let the American name confuse you, these are not the same as our weasels.
They are a close relative but are much bigger and have a longer, black-tipped tail.
You may have already heard “ermine” used in reference to white fur. In the north of their range, and even in some parts of Scotland where there is a lot of snow, the stoat takes on a completely white coat in the winter, only keeping his black tail.
That tail is actually a lure to distract potential predators away from the stoat’s squashy and delicious body.
The white pelts and tails were once a popular adornment to robes and fur collars, especially for people of high social standing. Even a history of hunting has never had a significant impact on the size of our stoat population.
Stoats are absent only from a few spots in Wales, Scotland and the islands off our shores.
In the rest of the UK they are fairly common, although rarely seen. Your best chance to spot one is to watch the edges of fields near cover, but they can show up in a variety of habitats.
They tend to run in a zig-zag along cover, by day or night.
Their primary diet is rabbits but they will take just about anything meaty. They are even incredibly skilled climbers and will get into birds’ nests to eat eggs and chicks.
When met with a surplus of prey they will kill everything in sight and then hide the bodies to eat later. Stoats can kill rabbits several times their own size with a single strong bite to the back of the neck.
As I’ve mentioned, stoats will be having their young, called kits, around now. They take over old rabbit burrows to give birth in.
Stoats mate in the summer and only gestate for a month, yet they have their babies in spring.
How? Through the magic of delayed implantation. Females store a fertilised egg for 10 months before letting it grow.
THERE’S a vicious little mammal stalking the fences and hedgerows of Britain.
It’s an incredible predator with exceptional hunting skills and a legendary fur coat. They are having their babies in the next few weeks, so with the grass still short, now is the best time to spot stoats out on the prowl.