A new resident…

Watching the birds this morning, a blur of white running over the snow drew my eye towards the fire pit in our backyard.  I put on a 300mm lens with a 1.4x extender and found a least weasel running over the snow, under the snow and exploring (hunting) all around the trees.  You can identify least weasels by their tail, in winter they have just a tip of black whereas other weasels have a larger black mark.  This creature had the little tip and was only about 8 or 9 inches long.  Darting around constantly, it was not easy to get a photo until it noticed me.  At that point, curiosity took over hunger for a minute and it studied me warily.  It moved between a couple of spots, each with a good escape route before we parted ways.

Pretty cool as I have never seen any small ground creatures around our house aside from our resident red squirrel, some chipmunks and three ornery black squirrels.  I’m not sure if this weasel is a longtime resident or not but it’s new to me.