Long-tailed weasels turn up in 682 Washington records from nearly every corner of the state, led by King County with 156 and Pierce and Thurston with more than 50 apiece. The San Juan Islands National Monument alone accounts for 22, and the record reaches from coastal refuges and farmland edges east to the Colville National Forest.
Built to follow a mouse anywhere
The long-tailed weasel’s slim, stretched body is an adaptation for hunting: it can thread the burrows of voles, mice, and pocket gophers and kill prey larger than itself with a bite to the neck. That appetite for rodents keeps it near ground-level cover, field edges, stream banks, marshes, and open forest, exactly the mix of habitats around the Skagit-Snoqualmie Wildlife Area, Tennant Lake Park, and the lower slopes of Mount Rainier and Olympic national parks.
A white coat for a working winter
Weasels do not hibernate, and in the colder parts of their range they molt into a white winter coat, the ermine of old, keeping only the black tip of the tail. Washington’s counts climb from spring to a June crest, when young weasels leave the den and begin hunting on their own, but reports come in during every month of the year.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the long-tailed weasel S5, Secure, in Washington, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
