
Long-tailed Weasel
A fast, flexible hunter able to follow rodents into spaces far smaller than its apparent body length.
Browse the published Explore collection for Saskatchewan, Canada. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.

A fast, flexible hunter able to follow rodents into spaces far smaller than its apparent body length.

A Brown Rat problem is a route-finding problem: identify the stocky ground-level rat, map fresh sign to food and entry, clean contamination wet, then close the building before measuring whether control worked.

A slender, intelligent canid equally capable of living in prairie, desert, farm country, forest edge, and major cities.

A hefty tree squirrel of farms, parks, and open oak country, often warmer-colored and more deliberate than the eastern gray.

A compact rabbit that freezes into invisibility, then bounds for dense cover with its cotton-white tail flashing.

The mouse most closely tied to people is best identified by a nearly bare scaly tail and muted gray-brown body—and best managed by sealing the building, not chasing the animal.

Missouri’s open-country Peromyscus is a large-eyed seed cacher whose crisp brown-over-white coat is recognizable, but whose indoor traces demand sanitation rather than close inspection.

Kansas’s flute-voiced grassland emblem is often identified by song before its yellow breast ever comes into view.

A living prairie force whose grazing, wallows, and movement reshape the Flint Hills around it.

A boldly marked prairie amphibian that spends most of its life hidden beneath Kansas soil.

Kansas’s state fish navigates opaque water with eight barbels and taste receptors across its skin, but the fastest identification begins behind it—with a deeply forked tail.

A house-cat-sized fox moves through western Kansas shortgrass as a low pale streak, using multiple dens year-round and letting open ground reveal danger before it arrives.

A talkative burrowing rodent whose clipped lawns and tunnel systems reorganize an entire patch of prairie.

A small, long-legged owl stands in daylight beside a prairie-dog mound, using another mammal’s excavation as nest, refuge, and lookout.

Kansas’s broadest weasel reads the prairie from below, opening prey burrows with long foreclaws and leaving fans of soil that may outlast the animal’s brief nocturnal appearance.

Utah’s state bird is an inland gull whose vast Great Salt Lake gatherings connect nesting islands, farm fields, wetlands, and migration routes.

One of North America’s largest birds nests on remote Great Salt Lake islands and travels astonishing distances to feed in freshwater wetlands.

Utah’s state bird of prey is a powerful open-country eagle most often discovered as a dark, steady shape circling over cliffs and basins.

Arizona’s enormous yellow state butterfly patrols canyon streams and gardens, flashing black tiger stripes and two tails on each hindwing.

At dawn, males turn a quiet sagebrush flat into a popping, swishing arena—a display sustained by much more habitat than the lek itself reveals.

Minnesota’s state bird is a superb underwater hunter whose haunting calls carry across northern lakes—but whose nest can fail after one careless wake.

Minnesota’s state fish is a low-light predator whose famous eyes, seasonal movements, and lake-by-lake management make it more interesting than a dinner plate.

Maryland’s orange-and-black state bird whistles from leafy edges and suspends a woven pouch nest near a branch tip.

Rough-haired stems and golden rays around a raised brown center make Maryland’s state flower a familiar open-ground wildflower.

Follow this jewel-colored char from shaded headwaters to Adirondack ponds, where water quality shapes its future.

A rugged freshwater turtle is easiest to notice when it leaves the water to nest, not while it lies hidden below.

New York's state insect once seemed ordinary; finding its precise pattern now demands care and a little luck.