Weasels in the Garden: Part II

I hope you enjoyed last night's film on BBC Springwatch. If you missed it click here to read my full story.

If you saw it you'll know it ended with a cliff hanger, with viewers unsure if the kits would manage to fend for themselves without their mother. She disappeared following a fight with a stoat in my garden. The story continues tonight on Springwatch so don't forget to tune in!

You'll be pleased to hear that at least five of last year’s kits survived to independence and two remained in the garden well in to the autumn. One of these was a male 'Mr Two Spots', who I named after the markings under his chin. These could only be seen when he stretched out his neck.

The following Spring, as the breeding season approached, I began to get anxious. I wanted a female to pair up with Mr Two Spots.

Not much is known about the courting behaviour of weasels and there was no knowing whether he would stay in the territory and lure a female in, or go off elsewhere to find a mate.

Then a female appeared on the scene. And it was literally love at first sight! The two weasels curled up in the nesting boxes in loved-up bliss, chittering affectionately together quite endearingly. Watch them here: 

Previous research suggests that weasels show intra-sexual territoriality – in other words that adult females exclude other females, and males exclude other males – but that the larger ranges of males include those of one or more females.

Two Spots and Teasel seemed inseparable – there was no chance at all that Two Spots could have had another female elsewhere. Indeed, in comparison with the brutal courtship I observed last year, between Mr Two Spots mother and his aggressive father, the tender relationship between Mr Two Spots and Teasel was remarkable. And it was Teasel who made all the advances, mounting and mock-mating Two Spots as he dozed and attempting to stir him to action.

Then, Two Spots seemed to experience a surge of testosterone. His testicles were huge! Purple and so swollen he could barely hold his tail down. His behaviour changed and the two lovers fought. Teasel was evicted and Two Spots’ newfound aggression kept her away from the feeding boxes. 

However, I was hopeful that having seen all the mating inside the nesting box that Teasel was pregnant and I held my breath for late May when I hoped she would be giving birth to kits inside one of the nesting chambers rigged with cameras.

And then both weasels disappeared. I thought I had lost them. Teasel eventually returned but there was no sign that she was pregnant. She was slim and lithe and very different from the weasel pregnancy I had observed the previous year with Mr Two Spot's mother, who couldn't make it in and out of the entrance holes to my boxes. Then on the very day Teasel was supposed to give birth a new male appeared on the scene. He was much bigger, with pale fur that was beginning to moult around the shoulders. I called him Caramac.

The first time he appeared on camera in the nest box, he met Teasel in the entrance tunnel and forced her back inside. He cornered her in the box, sunk his teeth into the scruff of her neck and proceeded to mate her for more than two hours in a protracted and violent coupling. This was much more aggressive that the tender approach of Mr Two Spots!

Scientific research has shown that weasels are induced ovulators – the act of mating stimulates the release of eggs from the ovary. Within weeks Teasel’s belly had swollen. She looked like a string with a very knot in it. You can almost see the kits moving inside her.

And now I am awaiting her due date of around 19th June with baited breath. I’m hoping she gives birth in one of my nesting boxes so that I can see the kits as they arrive. But even if she doesn’t she’s likely to move them at some point and I will get a chance to look in on the incredible process again.

If you are ever up in North Yorkshire - do call into my gallery at Thixendale (see www.robertefuller.com) where you can follow the action for yourselves in the live screens playing in my gallery! The next few months should be incredible.

Hope you enjoyed watching the episode.

About: The Weasel World that is my back garden!

Someone recently described my back garden as Weasel Big Brother. I call it Weasel Town myself, but the description is quite apt. Looking back, the tricks I used to photograph and film the weasels when I saw Mr Two Spot's mother for the very first time were quite archaic compared to the rig up I have now. Then, I relied on a mirror in the garden and a string attached to a piece of wood wired to the food I left the weasel - this set off a bell in my studio.

Of course I also used, and still do, the warnings let out by the song birds in my garden. Blackbirds are the best at sounding the alarm when a weasel is on the prowl.

But as the weasel sightings became more reliable I began to make some major alterations. I built weasel walkways along logs piles and hedges and even through scaffold pipes and hollow logs. I also built two drystone walls and in front of one I dug a reflection pool as an attractive foreground for my a new painting I’m planning.

And recently I’ve added a new hide connected to my living room via a tunnel so that I can move from one to the other without being spotted. The entire back garden is wired with cameras. In the corridor leading to the hide, I’ve mounted a large wooden box to the wall. It contains a cosy nest chamber, accessed from the outside at ground level. The chamber is lined with hay and lit with LEDs so I can film in full colour and HD, so illumination is essential.

And inside is a heat pad. Nothing but luxury for my weasels. After all I want to make sure the weasels stay here.

Watch me and my weasels on Springwatch Monday June 12th!

The female weasel living in my garden is expecting kits. Her swollen belly bulges out so incongruously against her otherwise long, slim body it makes her look an elongated tear drop.

I’ve been monitoring this tiny mustelid’s every move since April and I’m now counting the days until she gives birth. I have cameras trained inside and outside her nest. I don’t want to miss a moment of the action.

Small enough to slink through a wedding ring and furiously fast; weasels are notoriously difficult to study in the wild. In fact, all that most people have ever seen of a weasel is of it flashing across the road before it disappears into the undergrowth. But I have adapted a part of my garden in North Yorkshire to attract wild weasels. I’ve built feeding chambers and nest boxes for them and then rigged up cameras so that I can study them in their natural habitat for my paintings.

Weasel Wall, painted by Robert E Fuller

As a result I’ve discovered some very interesting behaviour. In fact the video footage I’ve collated is so unique it is due to feature on Springwatch on Monday June 13th and Tuesday June 14th. Here's a sneak preview of the story: 

I had at first thought the female was pregnant when she paired up with a male that already lived here.  I had footage of the two weasels mating and then curling up together all loved-up and had even nicknamed the female Teasel after watching the way she teased and pestered her mate.  They used to chitter lovingly together and groom one another in the nest.

But the love affair was all emotion and little action and the pregnancy a false alarm. Now that her belly is so unmistakably swollen I can see how wrong I was. Looking back their courtship was too tame and their mating too gentle.

I know this because on the very day that I had expected Teasel to give birth, another male arrived on the scene. A much bigger, rougher character who tumbled Teasel to the ground in a brutal tryst that reminded me why these tiny creatures have a reputation for being so vicious.

It was as though this male had come along and said: “Now this is how you do it” and sure enough after that episode there was no doubt that Teasel was pregnant. She even seemed grateful and curled up with him lovingly despite her two and a half hour ordeal.

Her original boyfriend, whom I had nicknamed Two Spots after the markings under his chin, was all that was left of a litter of seven kits that were born here last summer. 

I had spent much of last year watching and photographing this wild family and adapting my garden for them. By the end of the summer they became so accustomed to my presence they would scamper right past me as I sat on my studio steps with my camera.

I am an artist and the purpose behind all my surveillance is to study wild creatures in their natural habitats for my paintings. I couldn’t help adapting the backdrop a little so that my painting subjects appeared as if on set as they would in their final frame. I built a dry stone wall in front of the nesting chamber so that I could photograph the weasels peering out from it and added a reflection pool.  And in another part of the garden I assembled a pile of hedge root balls to mimic a more natural setting in the wild.

The weasel area of my garden, which I teasingly described as ‘Weasel Town’, grew from the first moment I spotted Two Spot’s mother in the garden last spring.

As soon as I noticed the female in my garden, I set about making sure she stayed here. I left food out for her, built specially designed feeding boxes – big enough for a weasel to get into but too small for a stoat – and eventually made her a nesting chamber.

The project, which involved 12 CCTV cameras hidden in the garden sending live images to my studio, led to my filming the first ever video of wild weasel kits being nursed in their nest.

I followed this female weasel from the moment she first mated, in an equally brutal tryst, to the time her kits took their first ginger steps into the outside world. It was incredible to discover that female weasels move their kits to new sites every few days and I photographed her as she carried them gently in her mouth, one by one.

I was even privileged enough to look in on the day that the adult female took the kits out on their first hunting expedition. By this time there were only five kits left from the original seven, four males and one female -a mini-fuzzy version of her mother. I suspect a stoat, which also lived in the garden, had got the other two.

They were just 48 days old and they behaved impeccably, following their mother nose to tail through the undergrowth as if they were all one animal. They shadowed her in this way, responding in unison to each of her chittering calls to attention, until they all reached an area of long meadow grass where I could no longer see them.

Very shortly afterwards, I heard a squealing distress call. I ran over and parted the tall grasses. There was a weasel kit wrestling a young rat. They were rolling and writhing about. One moment the weasel seemed to be winning, the next moment the rat had the upper hand. The rat tried biting the weasel’s face.

The weasel wrapped its long body around the rat to deliver a killer bite to the back of its neck; they spun as they tussled. I dashed to the house to get my camera. By the time I got back the weasel was winning the war and the rat’s squeals had subdued.

The weasel had the rat by the throat and was viciously biting into it. It was making sure that the rat was not just playing dead. It definitely was dead but it was still flicking and twitching. The weasel had been so caught up in the fight, that it hadn’t noticed me standing right over it filming.

It dashed off into long grasses to eat its well-earned meal and shortly afterwards I heard another young rat being caught by one of the other weasels.

It was a harsh initiation. If the rat’s mother had muscled in these weasels could easily have been killed. Female rats are among the most dangerous prey to attempt.  And these weasels didn’t even need the food since I had left plenty for this growing family in the feeding box.

Clearly you have to be tough to survive as a weasel. The adult female disappeared later in the year, shortly after I watched her fighting with the stoat to protect her kits, and over the winter only Two Spots remained here. I imagine the other males naturally dispersed to find new territories.

I kept up my feeding regime in the hope that he would attract a female and sure enough Teasel turned up. Then the new male and now here I am waiting to greet a new generation of weasels models to paint this year.

The making of an underground hide.

The pipes have arrived for the tunnel I'm making so that I can get from the house to a new hide without being detected.

It is going to run from my back door along the side of the house into a hide opposite where my stoats appear so that I can get out and be at eye level to photograph them without disturbing them.

It's turned out to be a big project - not sure the family are that keen on the disruption to the garden!

Blue tit raids wren nest

Caught on camera!!! We see you!! This cheeky blue tit was caught red handed stealing moss from a wren's nest then taking it back to line its own nest box!



Watch to the end to see the wren come back and look about the nest, all confused. You can almost see it thinking: "Where's that moss gone?"

Earlier in the season I watched this wren spend ages carefully positioning this moss at the front of the roosting pouch as it built its nest. Poor thing!

Wrens often nest in my front porch and I paint them often, as above. It's been great to watch their comings and goings via the nest cam this spring.

All the nest cams in my garden are proving a real draw in the gallery and people are so keen to follow the stories of each bird.

 The kestrel has just laid an egg and the blackbirds are almost ready to fledge, but the cutest at the moment are the tawny owl chicks. Watch their mother feed them by clicking the utube link below.



I've uploaded the best of the footage I've been getting onto my website. Click here to watch it:

Swallows in my porch

 

Each Spring I look forward to the arrival of the swallows to my garden. They usually nest in the front porch of my house.

 

This year they arrived on cue and started to build, but for some reason lost interest in nest building and decided to go elsewhere.

But fortunes changed in the first week of August when 2 pairs of swallows took up residence. One pair in the front porch and another in a passageway around the back of the house.

The chicks are half grown now, but I'm still having to keep my distance from the nests. I'm hoping to get photographs of them in the next two weeks just before they fledge.

 

The young chicks usually hang about on the gutters of the roof close to the nest or on fence lines. Here, they continue to be fed by the parents.

I have already seen swallows starting to gather together along telegraph wires. So fingers crossed the weather will hold out long enough for these two late broods to make it back to Africa.

The Painting Bug

Sorry I've been offline for a little while - the thing is I've caught the painting bug. My wife Victoria & baby daughter Lily have been away and its been so quiet, I've gone painting crazy! I'm normally winding down around now, framing and hanging the originals and tidying up my studio. But instead, (for some reason) I've started 8 new sketches of badgers, hares and stags. So I've got my work cut out if I'm going to have any of it ready for the show next Friday... watch this space, there is going to be some late nights ahead!