I’m eating my breakfast when I see a flash of white hurtling down the garden path. Reaching for the binoculars that are always on the kitchen table, I see it’s a stoat, part ermined, starkly revealed now the snow has gone. Its fur is a rich red-brown with white patches, the brilliant winter coat contrasting with the jet black tip to its tail. Flowing lightly over dormant flower beds, it streaks over a wall and disappears into the field.
Minutes later, I see the stoat again, a limp vole in its mouth. It runs around the square of the garden keeping to the inside of the boundary before slipping between the stones of one of the drystone walls. It emerges without the vole, which it has cached, storing the surplus food for later. For the next half hour I watch it hunting, undulating along coping stones, its neat little face popping out from under the topiary, as the sun comes up, a mistle thrush sings and backlit winter gnats take to the air.
My garden is undermined with vole runs, the soil sinking as I walk on the borders. There are dark round holes in the thick mats of thyme and chamomile. Handfuls of dianthus pull away where the base of its stems has been nibbled. However, the voles provide food for the stoats and their annual spring litter of kits, as well as for the tawny owls that nest in the sycamore or for the heron that stalks the field.
In scientific nomenclature the stoat is Mustela erminea, the species name referring to its valued pelt, which was seen as a symbol of purity and used for ceremonial robes. Efficient killers, they bite through the back of the skull or neck of their prey, able to tackle rabbits far larger than themselves. In turn, one of their main predators is the domestic cat; an ermine will be particularly vulnerable now the snow has gone. It does have a defence trick; like a skunk, the stoat can repel attack with a powerful sulphuric stink from its anal glands.
- This article was amended on 27 February 2018 to correct an editorial error confusing the litters of stoats and voles and to reinstate the original description of voles providing food for stoats and tawny owls.
