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Heron eats weasel (1 Viewer)

A set of action packed pic,s If these pictures have gone world wide and no more as been said about the herons
Prey this confirms this has a weasel, but when looking at pic 4. on here it looks big enough for a stoat strange.
 
Am still not sure if it was a stoat or weasel. Think when it was soaked it appeared longer! As far as inter netty thing, I have had 750,000 views on twitter and my blog is getting over 140 hits an hour over the last 24 hours!! Had phone calls from National press and have sent the photos to Birdwatching magazine. They may use them in their May edition. twitter is @jonoForgham
 
Am still not sure if it was a stoat or weasel. Think when it was soaked it appeared longer! As far as inter netty thing, I have had 750,000 views on twitter and my blog is getting over 140 hits an hour over the last 24 hours!! Had phone calls from National press and have sent the photos to Birdwatching magazine. They may use them in their May edition. twitter is @jonoForgham

congratulations :t:
 
Hello J

Wow that was an event to see and I would never have thought that a Heron had such a diverse diet.

I am sure that the Weasal would have liked to eat the Heron but this time it has picked on something a bit too big for it to chew on :eek!:

Fabulous photos by the way!.

Regards
Kathy
x
 
Absolutely amazing spectacle to witness. A Kestrel was witnessed by visitors and staff at my local RSPB reserve (Saltholme) a couple of years ago attacking and eventually killing a Weasel, which again but up an amazing battle with fair enough a BoP but a much smaller bird than a heron, would of loved to witness something like that myself, however did have a great weekend on my local patch, the largest murmaration of Starlings witnessed by myself and a friend, between 6000-7000 birds been attacked by a huge female Sparrowhawk, seen Peregrine falcons and other falcon species on TV attacking a huge flock of bats but never a Hawk Species and there was also a photo floating about in one of the birding magazines of a Grey Heron eating a adult little grebe.

Damian
 
I once saw a grey heron just across thee other side of erewash canal on the bankside near sawley in derbyshire And unperturbed by my presence which It was close enough to have been, the heron bent down and picked up a Unfortunate little bank vole which struggled a little before the heron positioned it in its bill and swallowed it a Live It was all over in less than a minute or just over a minute herons certainly don,t mess around when hunting and Finding their prey, but of course unless getting into the bank side the vole had no chance compared to the Weasel/stoat episode but even then if there had been no water around it might have been a different story.
 
Congratulations on capturing such an amazing sequence. It almost looks as if it is the weasel biting the heron's bill in the first picture, rather than the other way around. I wonder if it had been attacking the heron's eggs? Can't imagine a heron attacking a weasel for food.
 
Am still not sure if it was a stoat or weasel. Think when it was soaked it appeared longer! As far as inter netty thing, I have had 750,000 views on twitter and my blog is getting over 140 hits an hour over the last 24 hours!! Had phone calls from National press and have sent the photos to Birdwatching magazine. They may use them in their May edition. twitter is @jonoForgham

Well done!
 
Congratulations on capturing such an amazing sequence. It almost looks as if it is the weasel biting the heron's bill in the first picture, rather than the other way around.
It clearly is biting, and biting hard enough to draw blood (see the last pic)
I wonder if it had been attacking the heron's eggs? Can't imagine a heron attacking a weasel for food.
Nope, as it is an immature Heron (approx one year old), so won't have a nest. Herons frequently eat rats, which are similar size to weasels (or a bit larger), so it likely was after the weasel as a nice dinner, but perhaps got more of a fight back than it was expecting.
 
Am still not sure if it was a stoat or weasel. Think when it was soaked it appeared longer! As far as inter netty thing, I have had 750,000 views on twitter and my blog is getting over 140 hits an hour over the last 24 hours!! Had phone calls from National press and have sent the photos to Birdwatching magazine. They may use them in their May edition. twitter is @jonoForgham

I think stoat looks big for a weasel and in 4th pic looks like a black tip to tail though hard to tell with wet fur
 
Assuming the heron's beak is 12 cm long (I found this figure in a Dutch paper on Heron diet), the weasel works out as about 21.5 cm head/body and 6 cm tail (measuring from Photo 1). That seems about right for a male weasel (H/B 21.6 cm, T 4.9 cm according to average figures in Mammals of the British Isles: Handbook 4th ed). For comparison, female stoat H/B 26.2 cm, T 8.7 cm and male stoat H/B 29.1 cm, T 10.2 cm.

If there was a black tail tip, I think it would be obvious in Photo 1 (before it gets wet). The legs and tail look quite short as well, especially in Photo 2 where the tail looks very stumpy. All in all, looks perfectly good for a weasel to me.

Very interesting photos all together, particularly the fact that the weasel kept its jaws clamped on to the heron in flight.
 
Incredible photos! How lucky were you to be in the right place at the right time!! Thanks for your story and photos!
 
An amazing set of images you've got there Jono.

Very well done - thanks for sharing them... and sharing them with the world too!!;)
 
Wow. I wonder who started it? I'd guess the heron. Does that species of heron have that dagger tongue like our great glues? That would be the cure for that fight.
 

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hi is this a stoat? it is so big!

I think ussually a few good spears to the head kills the weasel but this one was not killed properly
 
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