Matching good looks with impressive agility, these nocturnal mustelids are a joy to observe
Mike Dilger’s WILDLIFE SPECTACLES The broadcaster, naturalist and tour guide shares the most breathtaking seasonal events in Britain
PARADING PINE MARTENS
Author John Fairfax-Blakeborough summed up the pine marten beautifully in 1921, declaring that “he is the wildest of the wild things left to us, and all his habits and instincts make for secrecy and isolation”. Considered Britain’s second commonest carnivore (behind the weasel) in its Mesolithic heyday 6,000 years ago, the pine marten then began a long and tragic downhill slide. Initially it struggled with the clearance of Britain’s woodlands, then trapping for its fur morphed into a ruthless eradication of the species, regarded as ‘vermin’ by the game-shooting fraternity.
Faced with such an onslaught, the pine marten was reduced to near-mythical levels of rarity across England and Wales, with the Scottish Highlands remaining its sole refuge. However, since the 1950s, a slow, partial recovery has seen the species spreading from its ‘HQ’ in Scotland’s fragmented Caledonian forests. Conservationists have even successfully reintroduced it to a few former haunts south of the border.
Pine martens don't hibernate, so late autumn and winter can offer sightings of these charismatic creatures. A member of the mustelid, or weasel, family, it's a handsome beast with an alert and inquisitive nature.
Similar in size to a domestic cat, it sports a dark to milk chocolate pelage (depending on the state of the biannual moult), a pointed snout, black eyes and large, cream-tinged ears. A mustard-yellow bib extends from the marten’s throat down to its forelegs.
An incredibly agile climber, its strong limbs, large feet and claws enable this ‘squirrel on steroids’ to shin up the smoothest of tree trunks. But it is equally happy on the ground, relentlessly rooting out potential feeding opportunities.
Pine martens possess an extremely varied diet, opting for anything abundant and in season. Research on the favoured foods of Scottish pine martens, for example, found that they mainly fed on beetles and voles in spring and summer, nuts and berries in autumn, and resorted to carrion in winter. More recently, in the Scottish Highlands, they have taken to human handouts, with jam, raisins and
