Biology_of_Mustelids_Vol_1.pdf

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its vicinity until the beginning of September, making short excursions in
search of food.
From the second half of September and into October the
families disperse, and ermine of all ages become more or less nomadic.
The female ermine is a very protective mother to her young.
She
is quite fearless if her nest is found by a man:
she runs about, making a
threatening "chirring" sound, and begins to carry away her offspring to a
safer place from right under his hand. We happened to observe in 1937 how
a female ermine successfully rescued her offspring from a forest fire.
She
carried the young some three hundred metres from a dry ridge, towards which
the fire was running, into a hummocky marsh where there was water.
In
another case, in April, at a nest located in a stack of hay about to be
inundated by flooding of the Kargat river, the mother swam through the flood
carrying her kits to a dry ridge.
The female evidently commences to feed her young with animal food
from.a very early age, since in the nests observed, even those containing the
youngest kits, freshly chewed water rats were always found.
There are few data on the participation of the male in the rearing
of the young. Only on one occasion was a pair observed, when, on 30.5.36,
a male and a female dragged something to a single burrow.
The female ermine apparently becomes sexually mature during the
first year of life.
A female was caught on 20.5.36 which was one year old and
was feeding young.
The sex ratio of trapped ermine is shown in Table 3.
The number
of females caught at the beginning of the winter is typically much smaller
than the number of males.
At the end of the winter, the reverse is found,
and females are more frequently captured.
The reason for this is that the
hunters prefer the male ermine which,
being much bigger, are worth twice as
much as the smaller female and, apart from this, the males are easier to
catch than the more cautious females.
However, when the supply of males
begi ra to run out, the hunters begin to take the females.