SCHIESS: Weasel battles and swooping songbirds

All of a sudden the singing of Common Yellow-throats and Marsh wrens turning into alarm calls as the rather shy songbirds started swarming my truck when I noticed a movement in the rocks below me. A weasel, dressed in browns and tans was working the edge of the dried cattails at Market Lake Wildlife Management Area.

I had been waiting for over an hour in the midst of a flock of yellow-throats, hoping some would come close enough for some pictures good enough for an article when many of the birds came almost too close. Their quickness in slicing and dicing through the thick cover was too fast for me even to get a poor picture as they would make fake agnostic attacks on the vermin.

Alternating pictures between the weasel and the birds required faster reflexes and focusing than either I or my camera could muster most of the time. Then it became more problematic as three young weasels appeared. They found a favorite rock and began playing tag and having sibling battles much worse than any I have witnessed from human sibling fights.

The biting, hitting, grabbing of tails with squeals and hissing as they would attack each other from behind the rocks and vegetation were not fake in anyway; but were the real life of vicious predators. Mom would show up from time to time, once even bringing in a small frog that was consumed by a single “crunch” and swallow of the largest of the three young. From time to time they would disappear for a few minutes before reappearing and continuing their MMA training.

I generally knew where the weasels were by the movement and commotion of the birds. Even a Northern harrier came to see what all the fuss was about as it made several dives at the vicious long tailed creatures. They soon disappeared for both me and the birds into the thick dead cattails.

The yellow-throats moved back away from me and I waited for a half hour to see if any other interesting happenchance would come along as I had heard a sora singing. No visit from any more strange creatures except a water snake slithered along, almost woven with the vegetation.

The weasels had appeared half grown and I recalled the strange reproductive system that these killers have. The breeding of this female actually happened last summer – almost a year ago and the embryos were not implanted into the uterine wall until this spring. This female had probably given birth to six to eight young and she now only has three and one of them was about half the size of the other two.

Only about 15 to 25 per cent of the young survive for a year or more mainly because they need to eat about 75 percent of their body weight each day due to their high metabolism rate. This creates a battle between siblings for whatever food the mother and each pup can gather. No wonder they were always fighting with each other. In several of the photos you can see them biting each other on the mouth and sides.

It was past time for me to get some work done, but I smiled as I thought how lucky I had been to once again see the real world in action. An hour of slow waiting had paid off and I, like Robert Frost, had been on a “road not taken” by many.