{"id":95692,"date":"2021-03-05T05:24:19","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T12:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=95692"},"modified":"2021-03-05T05:55:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T12:55:13","slug":"badger-preying-on-some-of-its-close-relatives-long-tailed-weasels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/05\/badger-preying-on-some-of-its-close-relatives-long-tailed-weasels\/","title":{"rendered":"Badger Preying On Some Of Its Close Relatives – Long-tailed Weasels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Serious conflict between some of the largest and smallest of the mustelids.<\/p>\n

Occasionally I rerun a favorite older post because it’s likely that few current blog followers have seen it. This one was published seven years ago. For this version I’ve edited and added to the text and cleaned up some of the formatting.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In May of 2014\u00a0 I witnessed a tense drama involving a badger and Long-tailed Weasels on Antelope Island. American Badgers feed primarily on rodents (ground squirrels, pocket gophers, rats, mice and voles) which they often capture by digging out their burrows. The digging prowess of badgers is legendary.<\/p>\n

But on this day the main course on the menu for this badger was Long-tailed Weasels. Badgers and weasels are close relatives as both are mustelids in order Carnivora.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

As usual I was looking primarily for birds to photograph but I found this badger near a burrow that was apparently new as I hadn’t seen it before. As soon as I looked at ‘him’ through my lens I could tell he had prey, which at first I assumed to be some kind of rodent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

But with a slightly clearer view I could tell from the color and elongated body that it was actually another carnivore, a Long-tailed Weasel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

The badger came up on the dirt mound of the burrow…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

and then turned in the side light to give me my best look at the weasel. At this point he disappeared down the burrow and since I wasn’t close and the light angle was bad…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

I decided to move a little closer to improve my lighting angle and see if the badger re-emerged. To my surprise he did, this time sans weasel..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

He paid very little attention to me because he was focused on something else in the nearby grasses. After a few minutes he once again disappeared down the burrow so eventually I left the area to look for birds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

An hour and a half later I returned to the area and once again found the badger outside and away from the burrow, which surprised me. This view gives us a good look at the ventrally flattened body that badgers are known for.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

And then he returned to the entrance hole once again. Here we can see that there were actually two burrow entrances – both fresh but the darker one at the rear with more moist dirt was the most recently dug.<\/p>\n

I believe these “badger holes” to actually be burrows of prey that had been dug out by the badger is he hunted, which is typical badger behavior. If either burrow had been the home den of the badger the dirt likely wouldn’t have been so freshly dug and the vicinity of the dirt mounds would have been scattered with prey remnants (bones and fur) and droppings.<\/p>\n

Then suddenly another actor in the drama appeared in the grasses near the burrow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

Another Long-tailed Weasel and this one was very much alive and kicking. It appeared to have a spot of blood on its front right leg.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

By this time the badger had disappeared down one of the burrow entrances and the gutsy little weasel came in close to investigate. I was floored by what happened next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

The second weasel actually went down the burrow (at lower left) that the badger had just entered.\u00a0 It disappeared down the dark confines of the burrow for a few seconds before…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

re-emerging. And then the ballsy little carnivore did some serious exploring around both burrow entrances before…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"long-tailed<\/p>\n

scampering off into the nearby grasses where it kept poking its head up and disappearing again..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

The badger came out once again and stared intently at the weasel as it popped in and out of the grasses.\u00a0 I tried to get a shot that included both critters but every time I clicked the shutter with my backed-off zoom the weasel was momentarily hidden in the grass. The weasel is in there somewhere…<\/p>\n

At this point the weasel left the area (I could see it scampering down the road behind me) and soon the badger surprised me once again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

He emerged from the darker, newer entrance with another weasel in his jaws.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"badger<\/p>\n

I suspect it was actually the original weasel that the badger carried down the burrow earlier in the morning, more than a little worse for wear and covered with dirt. He took the weasel down the front entrance hole and disappeared. I waited for a while to see if anything else developed but nothing did so eventually I left the area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can’t help but speculate about what had really been going on. Weasels den in the abandoned burrows of other small mammals and it’s my guess that these two burrows had been excavated by the badger to get at prey but this time the prey turned out to be weasels rather than rodents. Perhaps the dead weasel was the mate of the living one and the survivor was as brazen as it was because of the loss of its partner and possibly their offspring. But all that is pure speculation on my part…<\/p>\n

In the following days I went back to the burrow several times but never found the badger again.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Serious conflict between some of the largest and smallest of the mustelids.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23870,"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":[3,818,392,351],"tags":[31,5645,209,1133,2015,5644,311],"class_list":["post-95692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-badgers","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-long-tailed-weasels","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-badger-with-weasel-prey","tag-long-tailed-weasel","tag-mustela-frenata","tag-mustelids","tag-taxidea-taxis","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/badger-0015-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-oTq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95692","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=95692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}