News from WeaselCam

I have rabbits in the garden, which is a problem as they tend to eat everything and I am worried they will eat the meadow.  Some are small(ish) so I set a trap, baited with carrot, hoping to catch one.  When I looked through the kitchen window the next morning I could see the trap was empty but as I watched a weasel appeared.  It went through the camera box and as it emerged I was willing it not to go into the rabbit trap.  But being curious by nature of course it did.  I went out to release it within a minute or two and it didn't seem distressed, just trying to work out how to escape.  Once I had opened the door it ran, but only as far as the camera box where it turned round to have a good look at me.  Even when it had gone through to the other side it turned round to check on me.  Then I picked up the trap and walked back to the house but as I did so the weasel was still watching me from the other side of the drive.  It didn't seem spooked and was back to the camera box twice that afternoon.

Here's the video.  Listen after the weasel leaves the camera box and you can hear the trap snap shut.  There was a wren in the hedge just above, calling alarm.

So a lucky close encounter (for me).  I won't try the trap again but I still hope to get rid of the rabbits - a job for the stoat perhaps?  It is still around but usually avoids the camera box and is almost too quick for the other camera.

The weasel in the trap was male - broad and muscular.  I am learning to recognise them as they are turning up fairly regularly on the cameras.  Here is a female, smaller and much slimmer than the male.  The Mammal Society website says she weighs 55-70g (only twice as much as a vole or mouse) and he is 105-130g.

And, for comparison, here is the male.

I also have another new camera box.  This one is made so the camera can see through both entrances.  It is wider than the others but also shorter, which creates a problem with the camera's limited field of view.  The solution is to use a clip-on wide angle lens plus a close-focus (+0.5) lens, all held together with Blu-tack and gaffer tape.

I heard a mouse in the attic so I set a trap and caught the mouse.  I put it in the new camera box, hoping to get a video of the weasel collecting the mouse.  However, it was no real surprise that the weasel came in so quickly that it was already turning to leave with the mouse by the time the camera was recording.

Here's the video, not quite as good as I had hoped.

These videos were edited with the help of a new AI programme to improve image quality.  It certainly improves them here and it will be interesting to see if the quality is maintained once they have been compressed by YouTube/Blogger.  One downside is that the file size is massively increased and with my BT Superslow Broadband it has taken nearly nine hours to upload these four short videos.  I hope you enjoyed them.