This thing is a stoat. An angry stoat, trapped in a plastic bucket behind wire. Unfortunately, as I was on my own, it escaped. This morning it killed 2 more quail. The survivors are now in max security cages. (One-handed snapshot while holding a bucket tight against wire.)

@Miraz little fecker.

@Miraz 😢 I'm sad for you and your flock.

@macgenie Thanks. It's been a bit of a bad week for quail around here. I hope today’s cage reinforcements drive that little !@#$ elsewhere (but not eating our native birds). I gave it a few good whacks with a plastic bottle full of water (being the only weapon I could reach).

@Miraz Oh, no! 😢

Hopefully that little weasel will have an encounter with a hawk or owl or similar antipodean fowl 😡

@smokey We have plenty of hawks around here. May they have a bountiful weasel harvest!

@Miraz Indeed! (Sadly, our hawks and owls do not seem to do a good job harvesting the chipmunks and squirrels :-( But we keep hoping.)

@smokey at least your chipmunks and squirrels are native. our stoats and weasels and rats are introduced and they are devastating to our native birds.

@tones Yeah, that is a terrible consequence of our global forefathers’ carelessness :-(