Mink, ferret or something stoataly different...

[bunn]

 I saw a mustelid this morning.  Well, what I actually saw was a dark reddish brownish thing that scuttled across the path at top speed.  It was too small and the legs were too short and it was generally the wrong shape to be a fox, so I reckon that gives me stoat, feral ferret or naturalised mink as the likely options, given that polecats and pinemartens are extinct in this area* and the environment kind of wrong for them anyway.

Didn't seem to have any white on it and it looked a bit big for a stoat (definitely too big for a weasel),  and googleing doesn't suggest any local colonies of feral ferrets, so I'm thinking probably mink?  Though it wasn't  near water (maybe a couple of miles from the River Tamar), it was on the side of a hill with lots of gorse and rabbits, so plenty to eat and plenty of cover.

*though I've always thought that searching the whole of Devon and Cornwall for something the size of a polecat to check it's not there would be one hell of a job.

Comments

[adaese.livejournal.com]

Possibly a feral polecat ferret (ferret with polecat markings)?

[adaese.livejournal.com]

FWIW, polecats and ferrets are vaguely squirrel-sized, mink vaguely cat sized. The only mink I ever saw my first instinct was "otter!" but then realised it was too small - otters are largish-dog-sized.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It was definitely too small to be an otter, but ferrets do get to almost small cat size depending on age and origin, our neighbours used to have a couple of quite big ones.

I think they vary quite a lot in size though, the guy we went to for our falconry experience had some and they were tiny compared to others I've seen. Though I think those were fairly young.

... pauses to google - yes, ferrets get up to 5lbs, that's a small cat, but still definitely more cat than squirrel. It could have been a ferret.

The only dimensions I can find for mink suggest they are around 1 kilo, so smaller than ferrets - I thought they were similiar in size, I must say, but I'm not sure where I got that from.

I'm guessing a lot depends on the individual mink or ferret!

[adaese.livejournal.com]

I had it firmly in my mind that they were *larger* than ferrets (largely based on the one I saw in Tobermory, and the father-in-law's ferrets). But on actually picking up a book and looking it up, they have about the same range - both body length 30-45cm, both 500 to 1500g weight, polecats have tails 13-15cm whereas mink tails are 15 to 22cm. Mink are uniformly dark brown: polecat ferrets dark brown with lighter markings, particularly around the face.

The book also says mink get just about everywhere except Anglesey and the extreme N & W of Scotland.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

It couldn't have been an albino ferret, else bunn would have seen white.

Interestingly, polecat ferrets, as well as being a "throwback" to the wild state in terms of their colouring, also tend to be more viscious than albinoes. There was an experiment with selective breeding of captive foxes, which also showed that less wild physical characteristics went along with calmer temperaments.