Long-Tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata)

County List:

Rule:

Mixed Forested/Nonforested or Nonforested Landscapes

1st alternative:
      (Any Forested Upland Except Conifer Plantations (Any Size Class))
      or (Any Forested Lowland (Any Size Class))
      or Treed Bog
   containing:
      Dead Down Woody Debris
   adjacent to:
      (Edge or Riparian)

2nd alternative:
      or Upland Brush
      or Savanna
      or Coastal Dunes
      or Lowland Brush
   containing:
      Dead Down Woody Debris

Habitat List:

view size class definitions

Literature:

A long-tail weasel occupies forest-field edges, brushy fencelines, and wooded areas with shrubby cover. It often lives near water and can be found along marsh borders and in spruce and sphagnum bogs. The presence of humans, in moderation, does not bother this carnivore. It lives about farm buildings and on the suburban fringe and, in general, seems more tolerant of disturbed areas than its cousin the ermine.

Cottontails, chipmunks, deer mice, jumping mice, meadow voles, and short-tailed shrews are typical prey. Birds make up 10% of the diet. It fills out the menu with other vertebrates, insects, and berries.

Habitat: Open woods and woodland edges, grasslands, river bottomlands, fencerows. Found in elevations from sea level to alpine tundra zone. Prefers to be near water.

Special Habitat Requirements: Uses previously excavated burrows or natural holes or crevices for dens.

Habitat Preferences: The long-tailed weasel can be expected in most nonaquatic habitats in Michigan (except perhaps for dense forest), having responded positively to clearing and other land-use practices which the human population has employed in the past 150 years. Today, the long-tailed weasel is certainly at home in the mosaic pattern of crop lands, fallow fields, bushy areas reverting to timber, brushy fence rows, small woodlots, and even suburban residential areas. Perhaps overall vegetation changes in southern Michigan have been more attractive to the long-tailed weasel than those in northern Michigan. Where long-tailed weasels and ermine occur together, their ranges overlap, but the former species, in at least one study area in southern Ontario, showed preference for more advanced successional stages in plant growth. In Michigan, observers reported the occurrence of long-tailed weasels in brushy areas in Osceola County; on sand dunes in Berrien County; in swamp brush, tamarack and black spruce bog, and in runways under sphagnum in Charlevoix County; in woods, oak-hickory brush, and buttonwillow swale in Kalamazoo County; in bluegrass association in Washtenaw County; and concentrated in woodlots where eastern chipmunks were common in Clinton County.

Behavior: The long-tailed weasel may excavate its own burrow or fashion a nest in a stone wall, dead stump, hollow log, rock pile or under a barn. However, more than likely it will usurp an underground dwelling excavated by another mammal-often a victim. Sometimes a larger facility, such as an old woodchuck den, is used.

Associates: In areas where both ermine and long-tailed weasels live, the latter may prefer woodlands and advanced successional stages of shrub vegetation while the former uses more open and disturbed environments; however, there will be some overlap in hunting areas.

Key Components of Habitat: Avoids dense forest; most abundant in association with ecotones where prey diversity is greatest.

Management Actions to Enhance or Maintain Habitat Quality: Maintain woodlots in agricultural areas with minimal grazing or disturbance to ensure diversity of understory vegetation and foods; maintain shelterbelts and fencerows for cover and travel corridors; encourage establishment of fruit-producing shrubs and trees.

Habitat: The long-tailed weasel has the broadest ecological and geographical range of any of the North American weasels. It occurs across the continent from low elevations to above the tree line. Habitats occupied include forests, open woodlands, prairies, and alpine habitats, but do not include deserts. Where it occurs together with the short-tailed weasel, the long-tailed weasel may occur in more open habitats, whereas the short-tailed weasel may be more common in forested habitats or wetlands. In agricultural areas, capture records of the long-tailed weasel are usually associated with waterways not suitable for cultivation. The long-tailed weasel prefers areas with abundant prey, such as those where dens of pocket gophers, ground squirrels, and other burrowing rodents are numerous and close to cover harboring large populations of mice, rabbits, and small birds. Often this weasel is most abundant in the late seral stage or ecotones where prey diversity is greatest. DeVan found that stubble and plowed fields were preferred hunting areas.

The most northerly distribution in Canada is the transition between aspen parkland and the boreal forest. The boreal forest does not contain the diversity of species preferred by the long-tailed weasel and found farther south. Simms suggested that long-tailed weasels are limited in the North by snow cover, which would restrict foraging space and give an advantage to the smaller short-tailed weasel. Gamble discounted this hypothesis because long-tailed weasels are better at tunneling through snow than short-tailed weasels are and do not find snow cover a barrier. Long-tailed weasels often tunnel through snow for several meters.

Long-tailed weasels appear to be partially restricted to the vicinity of free-standing water. Hamilton referred to long-tailed weasels as "great drinkers" and reported that they drank about 25 cc's of water per day. Waterways may be important for dispersal of weasels as well as for their daily activities. This weasel is absent from the deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, possibly because of the absence of free-standing water.