A new mammal on my patch captured with the Bushnell Trophy Cam

I had set my Bushnell up on the earth that I had believed was a fox earth. This morning, I returned to collect it and found it had only one capture. A bit disappointed, I clicked on ‘play’ to take a look. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… and on the first view, I was not at all sure what I had captured. It was not a fox or a badger for sure…. what was it? I watched the clip about 5 times, before I was pretty confident that it was something from the Mustelidae (weasel) family; weasels, stoats, polecat, mink and otter.The only animal I felt it could be was a polecat.

I asked the Mammal Society to take a look and they said it looks like a polecat hybrid. They sometimes breed with escaped ferrets. The hybrids lack the dark guard hairs on the back and they have a less distinctive mask.

I wanted to see if I could get some better footage, so returned to the same spot and set the Bushnell up in a slightly different position to give a clearer view. I baited the area with a couple of eggs and some dog biscuits….

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I will collect the camera on Sunday morning….