Reader Doug Metz wonders what critter is using this small burrow on a stream bank.
Doug Metz, South Central Power Company
Q. Hi, Chip: I was wondering if you had a guess as to what wild critter might be using the burrow in the mud on the far bank of the stream at the top of this photo? The hole is maybe three inches in diameter?
A. Doug: With the hole measuring just three inches in diameter, I’d guess a mink or other small member of the weasel family has created the opening as an entrance to a bank den. Mustelidae, containing 64 species of weasels, mink, badgers, and otters, is the most diverse group of carnivores. In Ohio, six of those species are common: river otters, long-tailed weasels, short-tailed weasels (also known as ermines), least weasels, American mink, and American badgers.
In recent years, fishers have joined that list by returning to the wilds of northeastern Ohio. For details of that surprising, unexpected comeback, see my Woods, Waters & Wildlife column in the December 2024 issue of Ohio Cooperative Living magazine, pages eight and nine.
To give you some sense of size of the various animals mentioned above, badgers and river otters are the heaviest, the males weighing up to 25 and 20 pounds respectively. Male fishers can weigh as much as 15 pounds. From there, the body weights drop considerably. Male mink weigh about two pounds, long-tailed weasels 10 ounces, short-tailed weasels 4 ounces, and least weasels, living up their name, a mere 2 ounces. It is an individual(s) of those last four species listed — mink, long-tailed weasel, short-tailed weasel, and least weasel — that I believe may be using the hole you photographed.
To know for sure, Doug, set up a trail camera for about a week and find out. What you capture on a video clip or two may prove very interesting. For instance, during the past frigid, snowy winter, I placed a trail camera in the woods to monitor a deer carcass on my rural property in Morrow County in central Ohio. The camera recorded a pair of coyotes and a pair of red foxes visiting regularly at night; but never at the same time, as coyotes will kill foxes if given an opportunity. In addition to many possums, there were also a red-shouldered hawk that would fly in by day and a barred owl by night.
If you try the trail camera, let me know your results, Doug. I’m interested!
