2509_1461 Long-tailed Weasel
Last month there was a power outage. Mid-morning, nice day, no idea why. Maybe some farmer hit a power pole with his tractor. I decided to head out and make the best of the light - not a time of day I usually would choose, so perhaps a challenge to see what I could do with it.
And that's how I found myself in a prairie dog town, looking for Burrowing Owls. Suddenly, a red-brown flash dashing across the ground - a weasel? Yes! It ducked down an abandoned hole. What goes down, must come up, so I positioned the rolling red Toyota blind accordingly, and proceeded to wait.
I spot weasels from time to time, but not often. They're elusive, and in this area primarily nocturnal. I'll get to that in a moment.
Sure enough, a little brown face appeared, and then some of its upper body. The local prairie dog community was not impressed. One enormous (compared to the weasel) prairie dog began advancing directly toward it, and the weasel appeared very nervous - and suddenly bolted, with the rodent in hot pursuit. They zig-zagged through the dogtown, the weasel running for its life, and finally disappeared over a little rise. No shots of this - it happened behind my car, and I was shooting out the passenger window, not a good angle for tracking.
It was exciting, though. I knew prairie dogs can stand down the much smaller weasel in a confrontation; that's why the weasel likes to attack them at night, creeping into their burrows and killing them while they sleep. I've read this. It's quite another thing to see it play out in real life - the rodent standing its ground. There is no way to get my camera 20 feet underground in a small passageway in pitch dark to capture the weasel in full predator mode (or if there is, it's beyond the scope of what I can do).
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2025 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
2509_1461 Long-tailed Weasel
Last month there was a power outage. Mid-morning, nice day, no idea why. Maybe some farmer hit a power pole with his tractor. I decided to head out and make the best of the light - not a time of day I usually would choose, so perhaps a challenge to see what I could do with it.
And that's how I found myself in a prairie dog town, looking for Burrowing Owls. Suddenly, a red-brown flash dashing across the ground - a weasel? Yes! It ducked down an abandoned hole. What goes down, must come up, so I positioned the rolling red Toyota blind accordingly, and proceeded to wait.
I spot weasels from time to time, but not often. They're elusive, and in this area primarily nocturnal. I'll get to that in a moment.
Sure enough, a little brown face appeared, and then some of its upper body. The local prairie dog community was not impressed. One enormous (compared to the weasel) prairie dog began advancing directly toward it, and the weasel appeared very nervous - and suddenly bolted, with the rodent in hot pursuit. They zig-zagged through the dogtown, the weasel running for its life, and finally disappeared over a little rise. No shots of this - it happened behind my car, and I was shooting out the passenger window, not a good angle for tracking.
It was exciting, though. I knew prairie dogs can stand down the much smaller weasel in a confrontation; that's why the weasel likes to attack them at night, creeping into their burrows and killing them while they sleep. I've read this. It's quite another thing to see it play out in real life - the rodent standing its ground. There is no way to get my camera 20 feet underground in a small passageway in pitch dark to capture the weasel in full predator mode (or if there is, it's beyond the scope of what I can do).
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2025 James R. Page - all rights reserved.