While I was out walking yesterday on the North Downs Way, above Denbies Vineyard outside Dorking (the wines are a bit grim, but it's nice to have it there - good old global warming eh?), a creature I had never before seen crossed my path. Literally, the path in question being the North Downs Way itself. About ten yards ahead of me, trotting across the path and disappearing into a burrow in the grassy bank went something sooty black from nose to tail, the shape and size of a large ferret. Despite having never seen such a thing before, it was the work of a moment for me to hazard an identification - could it be, I wondered, a... black ferret? This is how we naturalists work - impressive, isn't it? Sure enough, back home I discovered via the internet that ferrets can indeed be bred pure black. So this was presumably a captive-bred black ferret gone feral, or a descendant thereof - maybe there's a little colony of them. This one seemed sleek and well fed - rather handsome indeed. I loitered further along the path and was rewarded with a second look, as the ferret trotted back across the path (could this be classified as a reverse ferret?)...
Needless to add that I was on the lookout for late-flying butterflies, but, despite warm mellow sun, few were out. Speckled woods of course, the meeters and greeters of the butterfly kingdom, and whites and meadow browns feebly fluttering around, but other than that just one fast-flying peacock and a velvety red admiral nectaring on an early ivy flower. I imagine the excesses of last week's weather persuaded all but the hardiest butterflies to give up on the English summer. But it's not over yet...
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Hmmn, friend ferret sounds used to people. One would expect a truly wild one to keep well hidden when people were around. Same for mink most probably, and perhaps you'd only see a mink nearer water. I suppose the tendency is to think one has seen a rarity when the likelihood is that one has seen something pretty darn common, as in all those "sightings" of the Beast of [insert village name here] which is probably just a well-fed local black cat rather than a ravening puma.
ReplyDeleteMy only butterfly in the past couple of days was one of the billions of painted ladies, but so tired or hungry or cold that it allowed me to get up enough to photograph not just its wings but the scales on them. Amazingly intricate and beautiful.
I saw a mink in the wild for the first time last weekend. I tell everyone I meet on the slightest excuse.
ReplyDeleteNige, is it possible that what you saw was a polecat? These look just like the beast you describe and, on the basis of what I've read and heard, are less rare nowadays than you might think.
ReplyDeleteI mention this because I had a very similar experience back in the spring, walking near the River Thame in Buckinghamshire. Something long and black came soodling onto the path, hestitated a second, and then disappeared into the vegetation opposite: had that weird, unsettling ferrety motion, something between a sidle and a prance. I went through the various possibilities in my head --ferret, mink, some kind of mixed-up Ali G of the weasel world? -- but none of them seemed right. A few nights later I was half-watching Springwatch and there it was --- a polecat, captured on film (amid much self-congratulatrory hoohah) somewhere in the desrts of mid-Wales. And a bit of googling then confirmed that other people, more clued-up than myself, had indeed sighted polecats along the same stretch of river.
Oh I like 'soodling' Jonathan - just the word for it. Polecats did cross my mind (weasels ripped my flesh - where does that come from? Beefheart? Zappa?), but I reckoned it was too intensely and uniformly black - and a long way from water, up on the dry chalk downs. As Mark says, it was a little bold too, so most likely something gone feral. Well done with the scales Mark - there's no end to the beauty of butterflies...
ReplyDelete'Weasels Ripped My Flesh' was Zappa, but only because he'd never heard of Reverse Ferrets. Indeed, had be done so, he probably would have called his firstborn Reverse Ferret Zappa (as having a more earthy appeal than Moon Unit).
ReplyDeleteThanks Brit - too late to change Charlotte's name?
ReplyDeleteWell Mrs B did trust me to go and register the baby on my own... the temptation to 'do a Zappa' was there, but I wisely resisted.
ReplyDeleteLots of formerly wild creatures are getting used to humans because they are forced to live in their environments. On the bus to the Glasgow airport ten days ago, in full daylight, all of us riders witnessed a pair of foxes trotting of a small copse off the big highway. They stopped, glanced up at the bus and the other traffic and clearly contemplated crossing the road. I've never seen foxes up close like that in daylight and it felt uncanny.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to Britain, Susan - down my way there are often more foxes than humans to be seen on the streets.
ReplyDeleteMaybe too late?
ReplyDeleteMaybe you're a follower of Professor David Bellamy on some other digital platform, but..
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