When my best friend, Fortinbras, and I were at Point Reyes a few weeks ago I was looking for coyotes. Although they are quite commonly seen across the area, I for some reason had not seen one anywhere since moving here. I think every time I’ve been to the Tomales Point trail, I’ve heard word that someone had seen a coyote, but I’ve never caught a glimpse of one. This particular day was absolutely gorgeous from a weather standpoint, and there was some decent tule elk action, but I wasn’t seeing a ton of raptors and definitely no coyotes. Fort and I stopped for lunch and hiked a short distance off the trail to a location I called “the poop rock”. I kept noticing movement in the grass a way off from us as we ate but whatever was causing it kept disappearing before I could get my camera up to my face. Finally I managed to catch the animal in my lens and exclaimed excitedly, “IT’S A WEASEL!” I’d never seen a weasel before and was thus delighted.
Later when I was pulling out of the parking lot, I SAW A COYOTE. But because Fort was in the car with me, my camera was in the trunk and I wasn’t able to whip it out to try to get a picture. So I STILL don’t have a picture of a coyote, however, as I told Fort, if I had the choice of getting a photo of the weasel or the coyote, I’d rather have gotten the weasel because I don’t know if I’ll ever see one again whereas I pretty much assume I’ll see another coyote at some point in time.
Not the highest quality photos, but here is the long-tailed weasel:
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