Speaking of weasels, the Department of Fish and Wildlife and The Nature Conservancy have been working on a pocket gopher translocation, moving gophers from a development site south of the Olympia Airport to the mounded prairie at Wolf Haven. Last week, a gopher burrow system had two traps in it. One held a gopher and the other held a long-tailed weasel. Weasels hunting gophers within the gopher's burrow system appears to be well-documented. It was fascinating to see the evidence though. Those weasels sure have a strong smell.

Kelly McAllister
Washington Fish and Wildlife
Olympia, Washington
Reply to: mcallisters4 at comcast.net
----- Original Message -----
From: Rob Sandelin
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 3:46 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] A weasel gets a towhee, Barred owl misses a squirrel


The snow of the past couple of days has provided excellent tracking, and there are several finely written entries into the forest register of who is around today. One of the many stories in the snow today was a set of weasel tracks, which upon following, led me to the mostly consumed body of a spotted towhee. There were odd scrapings in the snow all around the carcass and I realized that they were probably tongue marks from licking up blood covered snow, since there was almost no blood at the carcass. The weasel wandered quite a bit during its hunt, and it was a fun tracking exercise, and gave an interesting account of how a weasel moves through a landscape.

Later from the warm house window I watched a Douglas squirrel scamper across the snow, then go into high gear, full speed into the shrubs as a barred owl stooped down on it. I went back outside and the owl was perched low in a cedar, no squirrel in talon, so I assumed it missed that opportunity. Three squirrels were giving alarm calls, and even now, 25 minutes later, they are still warning all the woods of the uber predator in the tree.

Snow is falling again, so tomorrow the book will refreshed with new stories.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
South Snohomish County
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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