Apr 24th, 2015

Author: donich_admin

Pine Marten and a dilemma

I was just getting ready to go out this morning when I glanced out of the kitchen window. There was a large pine marten sitting on the bird table eating peanuts. On the rare occasions I have seen him in the daytime before it has only been for a short time as the cats always seem to turn up and see him off. This time, however, he stayed for about 15 minutes and we managed to get some great video and photos of him.

The dilemma was that for part of the time we could see two red squirrels trying to come to the table to feed. Whilst seeing them both in the same shot made for a good photo, we had no desire for the marten to catch one right in front of us (hypocritical I know). So we were constantly on edge and ready to scare the marten and/or squirrels off if necessary. Luckily it wasn’t necessary and the marten left in his own sweet time.

In the picture the squirrel is highlighted in red – unfortunately due to the size and resolution of the image very difficult to show both it and the marten at the same time.