I told part of this story and posted other photos of this weasel two years ago\u00a0but these two images\u00a0are new to my blog.\u00a0Recurring issues with my back have\u00a0mostly kept me out of the field lately which partially explains why I’ve recently been posting more older images than usual. \u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/long-tailed-weasel-8469-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"long-tailed-weasel-8469-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
I photographed this Long-tailed Weasel two years ago along the causeway to Antelope Island. Typical of weasels it was incredibly furtive and I had a very difficult time getting clear shots as it explored crevices between boulders for potential prey. Here it paused for a second to plan its next move and I got mostly a head shot with much of\u00a0its body hidden by vegetation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/long-tailed-weasel-8436-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"long-tailed-weasel-8436-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
I was close so when it finally\u00a0did give me a good look at its entire body I had great difficulty keeping all of it in frame, especially given that very long tail and how jerky and quick\u00a0its movements were. This image is full frame (uncropped). And wouldn’t you know it, when I did get a clear shot there was a piece of debris in front of its eye. I’ll try to look at the bright side – at least it didn’t (quite) block the catch light.<\/p>\n
Utah has 2 of the 3 weasel species found in\u00a0North America\u00a0– the Long-tailed Weasel and the Short-tailed Weasel, both of which have a black-tipped tail. But this one didn’t have a black-tipped tail (like every other weasel I’ve ever seen) so I was very excited because I thought I’d found a Least Weasel, the 3rd weasel\u00a0species in North America (Least Weasels don’t have black-tipped tails).\u00a0A Least Weasel in Utah would be extremely rare (unheard of in fact) because it would be far out of its normal range.<\/p>\n
However, my head was brought back\u00a0down out of the clouds when a mammal specialist from the Smithsonian (and at least one other knowledgeable source) said that this is a Long-tailed Weasel missing the normal black tip of its tail. Both its tail and its skull are too long for it to be a Least Weasel and the color of its ventral surface also indicates Long-tailed. The missing black tip of the tail could have been caused by accidental loss or by genetic variation.<\/p>\n
Still, photographing a weasel of any species is a special event for me so I was\u00a0delighted to get the shots.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And I was definitely fooled by that disguise.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,334,351],"tags":[31,209,280,311],"class_list":["post-60941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-long-tailed-weasels","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-long-tailed-weasel","tag-short-tailed-weasel","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/long-tailed-weasel-8436-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fQV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}