Avian dinosaurs – 2, Mammals – 1

March 7, 2015 • 1:40 pm

by Matthew Cobb

The amazing weasel-woodpecker photo (the mostincredibleanimalphotointhehistoryoftheEarth™), which became a world-wide media phenomenon nearly on a par with The Dress, could be characterised in soccerball terms as a 1-1 draw. Both the weasel and the bird survived, it appeared.

Nature is not always so charitable, as demonstrated by a series of photos that have just emerged – look away now if you are squeamish, or if you have a particular affection for mustelids. Professor Ceiling Cat himself referred to them as “horrible”. The result was a clear win for the avian dinosaurs on aggregate.

The events took place at Elmley National Nature Reserve, Kent, a couple of days ago and were recorded in around 30 photos by @jonoForgham, and published on his excellent blog littlehadhambirding.blogspot.co.uk. Here are a selection of the photos published by Jono. They are all his copyright, of course, and are reproduced here with his permission.

In the first picture, taken through the windscreen of Jon’s car, a weasel has attacked a heron, and is hanging onto the bird’s beak:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V8P-YopkPb8/VPjuRt8MhtI/AAAAAAAAREw/LQQ9-FrXJ0Y/s1600/DSC_0041.JPG

The bird then flies off, with the weasel still hanging on:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FjzKcxKrUmg/VPjuTx-GkqI/AAAAAAAARE4/FOl1_RhFYo0/s1600/DSC_0063.JPG

Jono was able to catch up with the pair, and then took a series of photos in which a life and death struggle ensued as the bird flew off. He writes:

the heron flew off to drown the weasel where I could then open the driver’s window and get better shots. The weasel just kept on giving the heron a hard time and was given ample opportunity to escape.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MPEICzLoR7c/VPjuWgtUmvI/AAAAAAAARFA/d3jb1Wo3zZI/s1600/DSC_0066.JPG

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JpXjDugBrRM/VPjuj0si3sI/AAAAAAAARFY/rO0_4ZQ5oh0/s1600/DSC_0076.JPG

The end of this story was inevitable. I can’t help thinking there’s a look of grim satisfaction on the face of the heron in the final pic. My conclusion? Nature is just things eating other things and there is no God—certainly not for that weasel.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cKIe2UHaZQ4/VPju8iBKAvI/AAAAAAAARF4/WALcXBl3kRw/s1600/DSC_0085.JPG

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0OBmtJIOZLo/VPjvANcSz5I/AAAAAAAARGA/bf8mHb6mICI/s1600/DSC_0086.JPG

85 thoughts on “Avian dinosaurs – 2, Mammals – 1”

      1. Exactly; and, given all the possible zebra-lion, weasel-heron, spider-ant, etc. matchups, it is simply arbitrary to declare that there is a god (usually done by religiosos looking at it from the eagle’s point of view, not the vole’s). Whose side is he on? Evolutionary explanations fit considerably better into the facts.

        Alternatively, there may be a god, and he might just hate weasels. See Harlan Ellison’s story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream for an analogous situation with human beings.

        1. Somewhere I read that if you counted up all life forms, apart from plants and microbes, the earth’s population is basically insects. God could just as likely be an insect, and creation is all for the service of insects. It’s not a reasonable assertion, but it does have the math on its side relative to a human or weasel God.

          3. Bacteria RULE!

            EVOLUTION IN ACTION!

            The remaining weasel populations will eschew trying to chew birds, whose ancestors once thought they RULED THE EARTH.

            As Eiseley would say, “Man, too, is a different expression of that natural force. He has fought his way from the sea’s depths to Palomar Mountain. He has mastered the plague. Now, in some final Armageddon, he confronts himself.”

  3. That weasel probably bit all the way down! I guess being stubborn and bold didn’t have an evolutionary advantage this time!

    1. The weasel would suffocate fairly soon, wouldn’t it? And would it be able to get a grip on the heron’s smooth gullet?

  5. Do weasels typically attack herons? Do they stop at herons?

    Do weasels do any sort of cost-benefit analysis? Doing so would seem to be an evolutionary advantage.

    1. I was wondering the same thing. What possible upside is there for the weasel in attacking a heron?

      Is the weasel perhaps infected by some parasite that wants to get into heron guts for the next phase of its life cycle? In which case both the weasel and the heron come out losers.

      1. Ooh, that is an interesting thought. Of course then if there is a God then it clearly favors some sort of brain eating cestode.

      3. I was wondering too, it is possible the heron ate the weasels young, or got too close to her nest so it’s going crazy? But I don’t see any nipples on the weasel. Perhaps weasels are just crazy.

        Perhaps this weasel has been very successful so far and it got too big for it’s britches, as it were. Over confidence allowed it to take on an animal it had almost no chance against. Weasels have been described as being fearless.

        I’ve read of humans with brain problems that make them fearless. Perhaps it’s genetic in weasels.

        There are other animals that do the same, honey badgers and Tasmanian devils. Tasmanian devils are suffering from a virus that causes cancerous tumors in their mouth and face, eventually starving them. They spread it through their habit of biting each other in the face. Lovely animals.

    2. I would imagine the heron struck first. The weasel is a good-sized snack item for the heron.

      Birds, snakes, etc, usually try to re-position prey animals so that they’ll go down their esophagi head-first. I suspect that in this process the weasel had a second or two to reposition itself into a more defensive mode. Sadly, all the defensive weasel bites in the world are no match for the heron’s bill.

          4. Hmmmm venturing into uncomfortable yet intriguing territory. (Thinks about backing away slowly).

          5. Let’s see if this link works:

            1.bp.blogspot.com/-6rq6d6iUCCM/T4C_5fdkp9I/AAAAAAAAAck/g5c6Fkq2IKE/s1600/Chinese-Striped-Hamster.jpg

          7. And….looking at the Url, it is supposed to be https:// Note s.

            (It’s going to be so not worth it after all this.)

      3. It’s pretty hard to tell from these pictures. Stoats are larger (body length approx 240 – 310 mm versus 170 – 220 mm for the weasel) and they have a black tip to the tail. There is also a straight clean line between the white of the breast and the ginger-brown of the upper body whereas the boundary is more wavy in the weasel. I am not sure that its possible to see any of these characters well enough to be sure in these pictures but it seems to me the tail lacks a black tip making it a weasel.
        The bill length of a grey heron is about 120 mm so the animal in the pictures would seem to be roughly at upper weasel/lower stoat size.

        As I say it’s hard to tell and I would be happy to be shown to be wrong. 😉

    2. “The stoat (Mustela erminea), also known as the short-tailed weasel, is a species of Mustelidae native to Eurasia and North America, distinguished from the least weasel by its larger size and longer tail with a prominent black tip.”

      –Wikipedia

  7. The photos could equally well document an incident begun by the heron trying to catch and eat the weasel. Maybe it was a weasel fightback?

    1. My thinking exactly. Herons are pretty notorious for what they can eat; one can find youtube vids of them eating bunnies, ducks, large turtles, etc. A weasel is well within their food-item size range.

      1. Yes, I’ve heard this about herons as well – they just swallow everything!

    1. ha! just last night watched Richard Pryor’s hilarious cheetah-gazelle routine from his 1982 concert on the Sunset Strip . . . if you get a chance to see it, he does mahvelous take offs on African fauna

      3. Oh, I loved that Richard Pryor routine!!! He had a realy sweetness to him that I miss:-(

  9. I’ve seen herons hunting and catching gophers so I can believe this was instigated by the bird and not the weasel.

      1. It’s from Star Wars – when they are pursuing the rebels on the Ewok planet.

  11. Weasels are known for their ferocity and tenacity. they are not known for their brilliance.

    2. I don’t think it requires much brilliance not to attack an animal 200 times bigger than you. if the weasel did indeed begin the attack, poor little thing must have been starving!

  12. remember, that weasel nommed heron eggs/chicks until it’s demise . . . took on a little more than it could chew, that time

    1. Maybe the weasel started on heron eggs, then heron chicks, then juveniles, assuming that with practice, the next biggest heron would always be edible.

      Kind of like the ancient story of the lad who carried a calf around his shoulders every day, until eventually he was easily carrying around a 2000-lb bull.

      Or my plan to go skydiving with a smaller parachute every day until eventually I didn’t need one any more. This is how evolution works, am I right?

      1. Yeah, I’m going to buy smaller and smaller cars until eventually I can just hover to work.

      2. “Or my plan to go skydiving with a smaller parachute every day until eventually I didn’t need one any more. This is how evolution works, am I right?”

        Why yes, as a matter of fact. Especially if you have yet to reproduce.

        1. Should form a jump league to establish a significant population. Makes the math more interesting.

      3. La Mark my words, as long as each generation of damned fools goes on surviving and reproducing, anything can happen.

  15. For more heron-related noms, “Heron Tries To Swallow Giant Lamprey, Chokes, Dies, Second Heron Tries Same Trick, Also Chokes, Also Dies.” check out The Tet Zoo comic from Feb. 2014 on two herons who bit off more than they could chew, either go to comic.tetzoo.com and scroll down or go to:

    http://neotonic.deviantart.com/art/Tet-Zoo-Comic-2-436512311

    or read the original article from the old tet zoo bl*g:

    http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/12/06/heron-vs-big-lamprey/

    enjoy!

    (also take time to read the “toilet sloth” comic if you are interested, and aren’t eating anything at the moment)

  16. I find it interesting that the heron took the time to drown the poor weasel first, especially while the weasel had its painful fangs embedded in the lower beak. This could be the launching pad for testing self-control and forward planning in herons.

    2. Judging from its “are you effing kidding me” expression in the third pic, I would think the dunking was more an attempt to loose the annoying little bugger from its beak.

  17. Somewhere my wife has a sequence of photos of a cattle egret trying to swallow a rabbit. The rabbit was not full grown but still more than a mouthful for the egret which struggled for a long time to get it down its gullet.
    I have watched Grey and purple herons eating eels which usually involves a protracted struggle as the eel performs heroic contortions to try and avoid its fate.

    1. Just to be clear, that’s grey herons and purple herons. I don’t think there is a grey -and purple heron (although there is a tri-colored heron!)!

  18. Here’s a video I took about ten years ago of a Great Blue Heron hunting and eating a gopher.

    1. Along the Sacramento River Bike trail I often see Great Blue Herons appearing to be hunting gophers in the spring when the gophers are most active. I was skeptical that was actually the case until one day while riding by, I witnessed a heron skewer a gopher and swallow it.

    2. It certainly likes to take its time, doesn’t it? I thought it just didn’t know how to swallow its catch, but now I’m wondering if it was just nervous and on the lookout for food thieves.

  20. I suspect the weasels are affected by that pasatite, Gnathostoma. There was a rather average fiction book, The Dinosaur Feather by Sissel-Jo Gazan, that involved a human infected by a parasite in the brain, changing behaviour. Probably the parasite ‘wants’ the weasel etc to be eaten for its life cycle…
    http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/gnathostoma/faqs.html

  21. I’m reminded of a nature film I saw recently with my sister and her husband. There’s a wonderfully harrowing scene of bison, including some young, running from wolves. The first reaction is to say “yay! the bison made it!” – but then one thinks – “but then, is there a little wolf cub somewhere that will be hungry – and might even starve – because the bison got away?”

    (Fraggle Rock (!) almost gets this right – there’s an episode where the fraggles decide, out of a misguided sense of the environment, to stop eating doozersticks. The episode includes a scene where a doozer family is shown as being saddened by their forced move, as they depend on the fraggles to eat their constructions and hence always have room to build more.)

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