I subscribe to the ferret genetics list serve, and there happened to be a discussion about color in ferrets The red coloration of European polecats was mentioned. Cutting a long story short I went to a site - The Vincent Wildlife Trust - to see what they had on polecat surveys in the UK. One of the downloadable documents was "Polecat and mink abundance monitoring feedback for recorders from the Vincent Wildlife Trust ". Turns out they look at roadkill. Which would be a good method of assessing numbers if you drive the same route and keep the conditions as similar as possible from year to year. Which they try to do. In the December 2009 report, in one section it mentions that the number of dead polecats seen was remarkably high in 2009, despite the fact that the survey period was halved to only one month. It then says the "Golden Polesplat" award this year goes to Anna McCann who recorded a staggering16 polecat road casualties. They did not say where Anna lived. For those interested the home page is at http://www.vwt.org.uk/ and for the report, go to Free Downloads, and under polecats click on the Polecat abundance monitoring report. There are some other fascinating pdf's as well - I plan to read "Pine Marten - On the Origin of Faeces" tonight. Great stuff. Brits have a great sense of humor. Meryl [Posted in FML 6676]