When the Weasel has failed by stalking or hunting such prey to secure a meal, he is known to resort to "charming" tactics. In full view of a hedgerow where small birds are numerous, he will throw his body into snake-like contortions to attract their attention. They become fascinated and curious, and though apparently filled with fear, they approach nearer and nearer until one is close enough to be grabbed by the charmer. Then the others recover their senses, and in numbers fly at the Weasel, mobbing and pecking him in a fearless manner, so that he is coerced by the defenceless creatures he intended to kill, and is glad to slink into cover. If there is a scarcity of live food, the Weasel will content himself with carrion. Its chief enemies are hawks. There is, as a rule, no seasonal change of colour in the Weasel's fur in this country; but occasionally it has been found white in winter. In colder climates this change is quite normal. The Weasel's nest is placed in a hole in the bank or in some hollow tree, and consists of dry leaves, grass, etc. In it the female brings forth from four to six--usually five--young, in spring or early summer; and the mother will sacrifice her own life in the defence of her helpless progeny. If necessary to remove them, she does it as a cat removes her kittens. In the north it is known as the Whittret = Whitethroat of Suffolk; in Yorkshire, the Ressel; in Cheshire, the Mouse-killer; in Sussex, the Beale; and in some parts of Surrey as Kine, which suggests Gilbert White's Cane, the local name in Hampshire for "a little reddish beast not much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer," of his fifteenth letter to Pennant. The more general name Weasel is the Anglo-Saxon _Wesle_. When Scotland suffered severely from a "plague" of Field Voles in 1892, the Board of Agriculture appointed a Committee of Enquiry, and the examination of witnesses--farmers, keepers, shepherds--clearly established the fact that the chief natural enemy of the Field Vole is the Weasel, and that the gravest mistake had been made in destroying and in exporting large numbers to our Dominions in order that they might there reduce the "plague" of Rabbits. It was even suggested that we should make good this error by importing Weasels from the Continent and turning them loose. Other evidence showed that the Weasel is frequently blamed by game-preservers for what is undoubtedly the work of the Stoat, the Weasel preferring the lower-lying farmsteads, where Mice and Voles are abundant, to the elevated ranges frequented by Grouse and Rabbits. Apart from its preference for the smaller Rodents, the Weasel appears to differ from the Stoat in being of a less hardy constitution, and in winter at least requires the shelter afforded by granaries and rickyards, where it co-operates with the Owls in an unceasing warfare on the Rats and Mice. Its extra-British distribution agrees with that of the Stoat.