I had set my Bushnell up on the earth that I had believed was a fox earth. This morning, I returned to collect it and found it had only one capture. A bit disappointed, I clicked on ‘play’ to take a look. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… and on the first view, I was not at all sure what I had captured. It was not a fox or a badger for sure…. what was it? I watched the clip about 5 times, before I was pretty confident that it was something from the Mustelidae (weasel) family; weasels, stoats, polecat, mink and otter.The only animal I felt it could be was a polecat.
I asked the Mammal Society to take a look and they said it looks like a polecat hybrid. They sometimes breed with escaped ferrets. The hybrids lack the dark guard hairs on the back and they have a less distinctive mask.
I wanted to see if I could get some better footage, so returned to the same spot and set the Bushnell up in a slightly different position to give a clearer view. I baited the area with a couple of eggs and some dog biscuits….
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I will collect the camera on Sunday morning….
Posted by Jeremy on February 25, 2012 at 12:27 am
Look forward to seeing the results!
Posted by lindasgarden on February 25, 2012 at 6:59 am
like you Kate I said recently your like the pied piper they all flock to see you and the lovely food you place for them can look forward to some more footage from you soon
Posted by sogsandy on February 25, 2012 at 11:37 am
Wow, that’s really exciting to have something different on your patch. Going to set up mine down the mill tomorrow and see what we can capture!