Woodlore’s Director, Steve Gurney, made a surprise spotting when visiting one of our East Sussex course sites earlier this year:
It was a lovely sunny August afternoon and I was walking back to my car during a visit to one of Woodlore’s course sites. Suddenly, a small creature ran straight out in front of me. I immediately stopped in my tracks; the creature also stopped and then made a u-turn and sped back from where it came from.
I slowly crept towards and looked into the bushes where the creature entered and to my astonishment a little weasel was staring right back at me. “Who’s looking at who here?” I thought, and then “Quick, take a photo”.
Weasel Watching
Luckily I had my new camera at the ready as I had been on a mission specifically to try it out that afternoon. Excitedly, I took a few quick photos in that very brief moment and hoped that at least one would come out okay. Luckily one photo did come out well which is shown above. I was so pleased, especially as such a sighting and photo opportunity like this was apparently quite rare.
– Steve Gurney
The Ray Mears & Woodlore Bushcraft Blog 
I like the joke Conrad 😀 We dont have these in Australia, nice looking creatures 🙂
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a weasel is weasily recognized, a stoat is stoatally different
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Thanks Elen. And thanks for the amusing story. I agree, it’s great when you have a close encounter like that and it can feel quite sureal.
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Lucky you, Steve, and a great picture. We had a stoat come by the pond in the garden last month. She too stopped and looked at me from a couple of feet away then shot off through the grass to glare at the cat. Cat thought about pouncing … I told her “Don’t even think about it! That lady has buck rabbits bigger than you for breakfast!” Cat sensibly decided to wash :-. Unfortunately I had no camera by me at the time.
Absolutely gorgeous when a wild creature will come this close.
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All my wildlife photos are in my head so no chance of that haha.
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Thank you. I still cannot believe I managed to get the photo. I guess I was lucky that I had my camera ready. It would be great to see anyone else’s wildlife photos that we could put on the blog.
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Nice! Great composition.
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Excellent shot.
Good sense of scale with the bramble leaves too.
Once watched one of these latched onto the back of a rabbit, tumbling down an embankment and twenty yards into a grazed field, until said bunny succumbed. The noise was chilling. Awesome little creatures.
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