Erminea wrote:
You were lucky, McTell, those suckers are very secretive and avoid (at all cost) human being (other animals not on their diet as well). But being on the topic here, I wonder, you English speaking folks say stoat, ermine and weasel. The weasel is different from the ermine, for one it's smaller, more common or more around. The question is when saying stoat do you mean the ermine or the weasel? Ok, I look it up myself but I have a sense that when folks say stoat they mean the weasel. Needless to say which animal I prefer most.
(off now to eat dinner btw)
English language Wikipedia takes one to the page headed
Ermine if, "Stoat," is typed into the search box. It also starts by saying, "The stoat (Mustela erminea) is a small mammal of the family Mustelidae." So by stoat is meant ermine, and not weasel, which fits with how I knew the word, for I actually hadn't heard of the word ermine (except as a description of fancy cloak trimmings) until I started posting here. Stoat was the only word I had heard of for the animal.
~
It was a pretty good walk for seeing wildlife that day. I also saw tadpoles, a group of deer and countless birds.