If you want know at least one thing that puzzles a stoat, it’s a photographer hiding above it in a tree. I was in a very large old pine tree this morning waiting for something that was entirely non stoat-related. But after half an hour or so, I noticed a flicker of brown fur flitting between the remains of a stone wall that passed below the branches of my perch. The stoat could see me, but wasn’t quite sure what ‘me’ actually was. So it would move from stone to stone, pausing to have another look up in an attempt to figure me out. At one point, a dog came over to the tree and came within a metre of the stoat without spotting it – the stoat made no attempt to hide. The dog (a sort of sheepdog/bit-of-everything mix) didn’t spot me either – it would have been a different story with a Jack Russell. After the dog had moved on, the stoat did a bit more peering up at me before returning to its journey along the old stone wall.
