Some people

A winter stoat or ermine with hard earned prey

 More often than not seen adorning the collars of royalty, this years early winter has seen a massive increase in the number of white stoats or ermine on view. I put a call out at work after we had a few calls from members of the public about their presence just to see how widespread they were at this time of the year. I was quite surprised as to the frequency; we received over 70 reports from as far afield as Berwick upon Tweed to Teesdale.

Largely they travel around unnoticed in their chestnut livery but now decked in white they stick out like a saw thumb, its surprising they manage to survive at all. Winter has all but ended now and so has the stoats white winter coat. My two local ones are now well on the change one looks very bizarre in a half and half look whilst the other has gone grey.

I have had some excellent views but too few with a camera in hand however I have managed to nick one or two. The best spectacle however that I encountered was up on the Northumberland coast. This little chancer who on failing to find any rabbits willing to play ball on the mainland decided to swim to one of the islands where the rabbits being blasé had grown fat and nonchalant. As he stormed ashore like the marines, after quite a lengthy swim for such a little fellow, the panic was clearly visible, with no where to go but underground or run in circles.


Stoat in partial ermine killing a rabbit

 The stoat’s first attempts failed as I guess he was still feeling the effects of his cross channel swim. But after a quick rest at the waters edge he was at it again this time successfully bringing a large rabbit to bay where he set about administering the coup de grace with fine aplomb.

The reaction from some who witnessed it was, well let’s just say silly if truth be told it was embarrassing, feeling more affinity to the plight of the rabbit rather than that of the stoat, there was anger from some that the stoat had succeeded. I will never come around to or understand these feelings as much as the so called birders who constantly harangue us about sparrowhawk and garden birds. This was brought up in the midst of the shenanigans as one of the rabbit friends declared all predators should be shot especially sparrowhawks.

I sometimes personally will the prey on in typical human, support for the underdog fashion but when predator succeeds I feel no malice toward it the feelings are soon replaced by ones of relief that nature has run its course.

Sparrowhawk and prey

The misplaced feelings toward sparrowhawk predation in and around the bird table are as a result of over sentimentalising our relationships with nature which is so common as result of the post ‘Life on Earth’ world of wildlife documentaries. If you feed birds then you create a honey pot which eventually attracts the attentions of predators, if you don’t want it to happen don’t feed the birds!! If you do then except it all 'red in tooth and claw' that something’s eat other things to survive it called nature, get over it.

Some of the reactions from ‘well meaning’ members of the public bordered on the hysterical and ridiculous, screaming with disgust instead of marvelling at the ingenuity and fortitude of this fantastic little predator.

The PC world and soap culture we live in has now invaded the world of nature and the documentaries that portray it. We anthropomorphise everything, we have made nature sanitised beyond belief. As another extreme example my brother was in Kenya last year on safari and could not believe what he witnessed, people (UK citizens mainly though three Yanks joined in) trying, indeed begging the guide to intervene in a lion kill that they had paid to hopefully witness. Saying things like, “why do they have to do that”, “its cruel!!”, “you should get rid of the lions”, “it’s disgusting and inhuman” and much more. The guides were mystified and did not understand the outrage that is increasingly common.

The Spring/autumn watch culture now delves increasingly closer into the lives of wildlife as they seek to continue the annual events and have an ‘edge’, some of it is intuitive and interesting footage but most of it is lost with inane drivel with ill informed commentary speculating and offering subjective views from the same old faces oohing and arrghing over natures perils and pit falls.

Fat as butter and very much alive a Farne Isle seal pup in December

A few years back I had to recover a situation on the media after one of their once widely respected presenters was nearly in tears with the situation on our Farne Isles, as the population of grey seals teetered on the brink of oblivion as a natural disaster in the form a ‘a storm’, in the ‘north sea’, ‘in winter’ threatened the entire grey seal population. His pathetic performance for cameras had everyone thinking this was a cataclysmic one off and there would be no more grey seals. When I was asked for comment on the news later after they had picked up on the 'tragedy' of the story, the shear disappointment in the newsreaders voice, when I said this was totally natural and happened every year and it is a way of dispersing and regulating pup numbers, was palatable, oh he said a complete no storey then, yep I said I reckon so.

Wildlife and nature is truly amazing but its cruel in the coldest sense it does not feel as we do the loss of a loved ones passing it ponders for a while, confused then gets on with life, only we see in their actions the way we want to see them. The reality is stark but simple the next time you see a sparrowhawk snatch cock robin from the bird table, instead of lambasting him think just for a second if those talons hadn't sunk home its very likely that sparrowhawk would not see the light of another day such is the finite line between survival and death in the natural world.

Anyway I digress suffice to say it gets on my nebulous ends and does nature no favours in our often polarised society as the real star of the show was the number of stoat in ermine around the region, a creature that never ceases to amaze me, all I can say is I'm glad I'm not a rabbit or that I am even more happy that stoats are so small any bigger and humans (I wish) would be on the menu.

A swimming stoat