Country diary: not everyone loves the dashing little stoat | World news


We moved to Orkney in August, and the first wildlife I saw – not including the ubiquitous gulls and shags – was a stoat. It dashed across the road ahead of us: a sleek little slip of a thing. He wore chestnut, a neat cream bib, and a tail dipped in chocolate.

I love to see them. They are so daintily proportioned, so narrow at the waist. So bendy in the back – lifting in the middle like a caterpillar, or a cat. Quick as a whip, he had bounded by and vanished into the shaggy undergrowth at the verge. They make me smile.





An Orkney vole



An Orkney vole
(Microtus arvalis orcadensis). Photograph: Joe Blossom/Alamy Stock Photo

But quickly I learned that my enthusiasm for Mustela erminea is not shared. First recorded here in 2010, they spread and bred prodigiously, and can already be spotted all over the main island and those connected to it by causeways. Local conservationists have reacted in horror.

Stoats may be small but they are excellent hunters (sharp-toothed stalkers, brazen nest-raiders) and this spells disaster for an island teeming with unsuspecting ground-nesting birdlife such as curlews, terns and hen harriers. The Orkney vole, a subspecies found nowhere else, is also thought to be facing Armageddon.

In response, Scottish Natural Heritage and RSPB Scotland have begun an eradication project: over five years, they will set 20,000 traps baited with fish, cat food and eggs. The first went down last summer, another 400 were laid on South Ronaldsay and Burray last month. Wanted posters hang in shops, libraries and ferry waiting rooms, with mugshots and an appeal for information: “Have you spotted a stoat?” They offer an email address to contact if you have.





Stoat traps on an Orkney roadside



Some of the 20,000 stoat traps being set in Orkney. Photograph: Mark Ferguson/Alamy

A few days ago, I walked on the beach at twilight. The sky was soaked in violet; the sea washed and withdrew, washed and withdrew. Fulmars slid by overhead, spy planes making smooth and soundless observations. I clambered over rocks, slipped on seaweed, and as I lifted my head above a parapet I saw a movement. A tiny, dashing thing. I smiled.

Then I remembered. For a long moment I paused. And, like a traitor, I picked up my phone and I turned him in.


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