Death in the snow

There is a bit of a story behind this image. The recent snow caused my daughters school to close, so never one to miss an opportunity we went out for a walk to the old gravel quarry. We spotted this stoat chasing around but where quite a distance away, and by the time we got close enough he had disappeared. We lay down in the snow for around ten minutes and by now we where in blizzard conditions! Leia was getting wet so I decided we better call it a day. As we stood up we saw the stoat again in front of us, racing between some old containers that had been left behind. Suddenly a rabbit came racing towards us, as he caught sight of us he made a critical decision and raced back in the direction he had come from, only to be met head on by Mr Stoat. What followed was pretty grusome. Needless to say this one way fight went on for about five minutes. The stoat eventually pulled the carcass under one of the containers about four metres away. I turned to my 11 year old and asked her if she was ok. Yes she said, its just nature! Of course shes right but I did feel a little guilty, after all the rabbit was well away until he saw us

I would have liked some better images. I am sure the shot is sharp but there was such a large amount of snow falling between me and the action! This is about a 30% crop. Again, I think I could have crawled closer, but what I didn't want was the stoat to retreat and to be left with a badly injured rabbit. On reflection I think this little guy would have probably had a tug of war with me if I'd tried to take it away

Canon 50d
Canon 100-400 at 400
1/800 @ f8
ISO 250