The stoat does not dig its own burrows. Instead it uses the burrows of the rodents it kills. The skins and underfur of the rodents it kills are used to line the nest chamber. The nest chamber is sometimes found in places that doesn't look like a good place to live in, such as among logs piled against the walls of houses. The stoat also lives in old and rotting stumps, under tree roots, in heaps of brushwood, haystacks, in bog hummocks, in the cracks of empty mud buildings, in rock piles, rock clefts, and even in magpie nests.