Getting to know and love pine martens

Over the last two weeks, I have had the enormous and exciting pleasure of getting to know a British native species that I have never met before. having been an enthusiastic and active naturalist for the last 40+ years, there are not many British mammal species that I do not have some experience with: but pine martens are not widespread and are pretty elusive over much of their range.

We know that we were, in all likelihood, going to see this species up close, but I wanted to stay within the Code of Conduct for nature photography. This meant that the animals needed to be baited with things that they were used to, but would do no harm. Personally, I'm convinced that any type of peanut butter is destructive of mind, body and soul. This is the usual attractant for this species, but I was reluctant to handle the stuff let alone feed it to unsuspecting wildlife. So we used raisins and whole peanuts: not perfect but we also hid the food amongst natural elements like logs, stones and moss so that some natural foraging behaviour was encouraged.

At first, we used the trail camera and to our great delight, two well grown cubs (identified by their fluffy coats and small heads) arrived and scrambled all over the feeding table.

Pine marten cubs search for goodies - infra-red image.

As time went on, the adults became bolder and we saw more of them. They chased the chaffinches around the bird feeders we had placed in some silver birch trees and pranced about on the rocks above their den. Long-legged and lithe, the pine marten seems to be moving on uncontrollable springs, bouncing across open space and leaping up into trees or onto the summit of prominent rocks.

Adult pine marten investigates the baited feeding table just after dusk. Loch and West Highlands in the background.

Once we had got the animals a bit more used to coming to the feeding table when it was lit with a gentle tungsten light, I could set up the Canon 5D Mk3 and Canon 300mm f2.8 to record their presence. The image below shows that even a comparatively small animals is of great interest to the West Highland midge!

Pine marten with a cloud of midges around it.

Pine martens are a fantastic photographic subject. I managed to get a couple of pleasing images, but I'm definitely hooked; they are a lot of fun and really challenging.

The nocturnal and crepuscular pine martens occupied the evenings, but each morning was devoted to otters. A different set up and in a different location: but that's for the next blog!

The Canon 5D III, 300mm f2.8 with x2 converter and an excellent otter location:  heavenly!