Animal of the Week March 3, 2015 — weasel on a woodpecker

The most amazing picture I've ever seen.

This week's animal is a double-header (quite literally for a few moments): Mustela nivalis (weasel) and Picus viridis (green woodpecker). Martin Le-May was out with his camera in Hornchurch County Park in east London when he witnessed this amazing sight—and more importantly captured it on camera.

Although it looks like the weasel and the woodpecker are joined in their purpose, zooming off on some vital mission of life and death. What's probably happening is that the weasel pounced on the woodpecker hoping to have it for its lunch, but unaccustomed to how hard green woodpeckers are (they usually eat small rodents and rabbits) the weasel was lifted in the air as the bird took flight. The woopecker eventually landed and managed to shake off its hungry passenger.

Weasels, or if you're outside the UK 'least weasels', are the smallest members of the mustelid family (the largest in the family being sea otters and wolverines) and in fact the smallest carnivore—weighing between 30 g for the smallest females and 250 g for a really fat constipated male after lunch (that's 1 ounce to 8 ounces in old money). But they are also double-hard bastards, frequently taking out animals much bigger than they are including rats and rabbits.

Green woodpeckers are the largest woodpeckers found in the UK. Contrary to what you might think they don't peck at trees to find food, rather green woodpeckers feed mostly on ants on the ground. Green woodpeckers do hollow out next holes in dead wood, but they also drum on trees to advertise their presence to rivals for territory and to attract mates. They are a common sight in the parks of London, but don't look up in the trees to see them, look to the ground. They might be confused with the similarly sized parakeets, although have shorter tails, are less noisy, and have a bright red cap to set them apart. An old folk name for the green woodpecker was the 'yaffle'—and Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss was a carved green woodpecker.

I've only seen three weasels in my life.

Not been a great many AOTWs of late, but I can't not have this mentioned on the blog in some way. Perhaps it's the jetlag, but I can't recall ever having felt so happy as when I first saw the image posted here (even though I had been forced to hold my nose and click on a Daily Mail link to see it). I do think it might be the most amazing picture I have ever seen.