National Geographic

So much is happening with our original pine marten family.. it's changing on a daily basis.

In the last blog we were amazed the third kit had made a surprise appearance after an absence of many months.
Cullen confronted the third kit, now named Keane at one of our cameras. They had a fair old tussle before going their separate ways none the worse for the encounter, since this meeting, they have been together a fair bit with no more fighting. Jagger (the adult male) has also been with them on an individual basis mostly. However, Jagger and Cullen are still best mates..
 
 This clip we got of the male kits fighting was bought by National Geographic channels for £170. They sourced the clip through Newsflare.

Newsflare contacted me to ask permission to sell the clip with a 50-50 share.

I can't wait to update on young Katy..
It seems she's back and accepted by the family, I've got clips with her and Jagger, and her and Cullen, they are getting on very well. She visits very often, almost daily as do all 5 martens.. So happy she didn't need to leave... just yet anyway!!

For a few days Pip our wee border terrier was attracted to a pile of logs in the forest by the road, I ignored it for a while.. Meg eventually suggested there might be a Marten lying up in the pile.
I carry a small torch in my rucksack so promptly got down on my belly and began to systematically look in every small crack and hole.
There was an egg shell... wow... so a Marten had been in the logs at some point!
However....Pip knew better than me, he steadfastly pointed to one spot.. well, he was actually biting the log! 
I got back down flat on the ground, shone my light in the hole between the logs.. low and behold a Pine Martens bright white eyes shone back at me, no more than 10 feet away.
I must admit.. i got the fright of my life, I only kept the torch light on the animal for a second, then bolted, not halting until we were at our car which is a safe distance away. The last thing we want is to disturb a Marten.
If pushed, I'd say it was Katy in the logs because at the time she was getting a rough time of it from the males.. this location is a bit away from the main family area, possibly a safe place for her to rest up... to be fair, this last statement is a total guess!!
I contacted the forestry company to protect the log pile until it can be assessed. 

We're hopeful Mrs Brown will have another litter of kits this year, today we had the first positive sign, she had a teat showing which hopefully proves she's lactating and feeding young! I actually noticed her back end swollen and protruding slightly yesterday 06.04.18. I'll stick my neck out and say her kits were born the last couple of days... between the 4th and 6th April 2018.

This is the advantage of having a camera set at 2 feet, lots of detail! I've been scrutinising every second of footage looking for a sign that's she's given birth over the past couple of weeks. I'm sure I got proof  today... fingers crossed.

We're working to build a hide next to the cameras at this family of martens. Margaret and me sat in on Thursday night, by 7 pm we were settled in.. It was never the plan to sit all night but at 7.15 a Marten  appeared, more or less at our feet... it came through a hole in a tree root on the ground level. In fact, it's the same hole Pip tries to get through every time we go to the cameras.. Pip's nose doesn't lie.. Anyway, the Marten turned on it's heels and shot off..
 I just presumed the martens would run over the many windfall trees to the cameras.. not along the ground! That was a surprise..


 Our hide was too close. I'm working on plan B and this will work....

 Watch this space...

Kit number 3 came home!

This Blog should have been shared in March 2018

I actually don't know where to start, so much has happened since I last blogged....

Lets update Mrs Brown and family first..
I moved camera location due to unforeseen circumstances. At the time I must admit, I was gutted having to leave our tried and trusted area, as it turns out it might just be the best move we've made. I've been busy the past couple of weeks preparing the new area to better suit our needs. The results have blown us away...
I have a method to encourage martens to a specific area, having said that they must be operating close by or it won't work! On this occasion it worked and quickly...

First to find the new area was Cullen, he's last years male kit.. next up was his partner in crime..Jagger the adult male. It's come as a real surprise to Margaret and me how often those two animals are together. They play fight quite often... I never for one moment expected an adult male pine marten to tolerate a male kit that's a year old, never mind enjoying his company and playing with him... I wonder how long this will last!!

Katy.. poor Katy..
The female Kit from 2017, she was having a hard time of it from Cullen, quite often in front of camera he would chase her off. It wasn't a surprise to us when she stopped visiting. However it was a real concern (we do get attached to them) when she stopped coming to the cameras because it coincided with a really cold, snowy period that lasted for weeks. It was always a possibility she had perished... I think she was away for around 6 weeks maybe a bit more...low and behold she reappeared looking a million dollars, healthy and fit, what a great surprise for us... she's been back for a week or more but last night Jagger gave her a hiding off camera, it was heart wrenching to listen to. I don't think she'll hang around long, but it's great to know she got through her first winter and healthy. we're so happy for her...

The third Kit...
I cannot believe I'm writing this, the third kit came back. July 2017 is the last clip of this animal i can find. I honestly thought it had died!! I really did wonder if Twiggy (a female marten observed about 7 miles away  at another camera trap location) was the 3rd kit, but now the kit is back it's plain to see they are very different animals.
The other two Kits hung around all winter and are still here... What an amazing animal this 3rd marten is, to leave Mrs Brown and her siblings at such a young age and thrive. 

So, 2 marten kits have come home within a week or so of one another.. there must be a reason for this but i don't know the answer!
To add to this quandary... for the very first time we got Jagger and Mrs Brown on camera together also Bow and Twiggy together on camera at a different location... all this within a couple of weeks. There is something in the air but I'm buggered if I know what's going on.. Could it be the impending new kit births? Long shot but It has crossed our minds!!



 

Update of our five Pine Marten Locations.

I haven't posted for a while so this update is long over due...

Mrs Brown and her Kits are doing extremely well, at the time of writing 01.02.18, we still have a male and a female kit visiting every day. The third kit probably perished in the summer, it hasn't been seen with siblings or mum, however there is an outside chance the third kit is at another set of cameras. Certainly the Bib is quite similar with a brown streak running up the center which is unusual.. I just haven't tried to make a positive ID, I need to make a point of getting bib shots of 'Twiggy' then compare with the third Kit... It does seem unlikely!
An unexpected interaction (for me it was a surprise) has been happening for a few weeks now. Jagger the resident male and maybe even dad has come back for the winter after a long absence. He and the young male have been seen together on numerous occasions at the feeders, I really didn't expect Jagger to tolerate the young upstart but he is!!  The female Kit has the short end of the stick, she is at the bottom of the pecking order and gets chased off the feeder, especially by the young male, however they still stick close to one another but aren't in each others pockets all of the time..

Mrs Brown, the mum has basically left the 2 kits to their own devices only showing up once in a while... not even weekly! She has moved out since winter hit, only showing up for brief periods... we just don't know what other area her territory covers. She still interacts with the Kits when she's around. 

Jagger on the other hand moved back in just as winter took hold. He was absent from this part of his territory all summer.. It seems to us this area we camera trap is his winter strong hold, he feeds else where in the summer.  The only other possibility is he was keeping out of the way until the Kits grew up a bit. It's really interesting!!!

We've never had Both adults in the same clip, on the very odd occasion they have been around at roughly the same time but we've never seen them meet each other.
Sadly there is another couple of guys put cameras in the forest at this location which isn't best camera trap practice I'd suggest! They really should find an area for themselves in my view!!

Kyle is still visiting at the second Pine Marten location we found around December 2016, well not quite the same location because that section of forest got chopped down, we found the Marten about 1 1/2 miles away. I'm still unsure if Kyle is an adolescent male or a female. Maybe this year will shed some light on it's sex. I think it's features are that of a male.
I haven't had a camera on this location all the time or even put food out all that regularly but as spring approaches we'll be more consistent with the hope of sexing it. We've never seen another Marten in this Forest..

Craig at the third location we found, has been trouble since the very beginning. We spent many months from late 2016 until the present time trying to pinpoint him.
We only ever found him in one tiny annexed piece of forest. We just couldn't find where he came in or left and believe me... we tried. Then to add to our troubles his section of forest got felled. We avoided the area while the harvesting was taking place. 
Recently however, I've popped eggs into the felled area and low and behold he's still visiting, eggs eaten pine marten style is a dead give away. I need to have a think about this animal and what to do!

Location 4 is an an absolute hotspot for Marten it seems.. there are many many scats on the forest road. 
We have Twiggy, I assume a female but not positive then we have Bow he's definitely a male. There is also another Marten un-named as yet, I just don't know if it's male of female, it visits the carcass cam which is out in the open. It visited this area before I put a camera in because we found scat. A Marten out in the open in daylight isn't sensible, so we'll probably shut this camera down as spring approaches...

The walk is roughly 9 miles and we believe there are more Martens farther out and maybe even closer in but we don't have enough cameras to saturate the area.

We have as of two weeks ago got a 5th Pine Marten location , I popped eggs in a squirrel box that just happened to be in the forest for a Squirrel survey. Eggs have been taken twice from the box... only a Marten or a human can get the eggs from the box! I hope it wasn't a human because I've got a camera on it as I Blog this!!
Typically, between finding this new Marten and now... trees have been marked for felling.. 

Camera trapping in a working Sitka Spruce plantation can be so frustrating, especially when the companies that run them won't help us. They don't hinder but they won't help.... I can't quite understand why they don't utilize our willingness to help them for free...  



   

  

A Pine Marten turned up at the river camera.

We didn't manage to walk into Twiggy's area on Sunday, so we cycled in on Tuesday evening the 5th September. It's getting dark early and  I can't get the setup even close to suitable... we won't be able to cycle in after work in daylight for much longer. We're up against it with this new location.

Quality video is proving impossible... the footage is blurry again, I may have forgotten to clean the lens after applying rainx. I need to investigate next time I'm in. I'll double check my settings as well.... It's so much effort to be left with rubbish footage I can't differentiate one Marten from another. We can't just nip back and footer with the setup, it's too far.

On a much more positive note, the camera we set by the river got a Pine Marten hunting in the reeds. We got footage of voles in this area too.
What a great find, we noticed a few PM scats leading to this area last week and just wondered if the animals used those boulders to cross the river. I'm absolutely convinced they will! There are very few alternative crossing points to get from one side to another...assuming they want to of course.

 It seems the animals hunt the river bank that's a great find for us. Something to work on!

On the downside.... I pulled the camera out!!!!

A new platform for Twiggy and friends.

Now that we've located another population of Marten's we need better footage.

To get to this camera we need to drive about 12 miles each way.. after the drive it's around an 8 mile circular walk. As I said before it's so time consuming, So Meg and me decided to cycle in last Friday evening, that was much quicker.
We walked back in on Sunday to take the feeding/camera platform in.

If we can keep the PM's on the platform it allows for better footage and ID.

Me being me wanted to check to see if Twiggy had visited the new setup, So yesterday I asked Meg  if she fancied a cycle in after work, which she did...
 Twiggy had been, the footage was a bit rubbish because the camera is set too close. I'll sort that next time we're in, which will probably be Sunday.

When we were in last Sunday we set a camera by the burn, there are boulders which are a possible crossing point for fox and PM, we found four PM scat close by, so time will tell if they cross the burn, we might even capture otter which we saw a couple of weeks ago on the same burn. The camera is a tad vulnerable to theft... it's a chance i thought might be worthwhile. Very few people visit this spot..

Just a quick update for Mr's B, Jagger and the Kits....

We also visit this setup a couple of times a week.. that's a around a 10 mile drive each way and a two mile walk. They're all doing well and putting in appearances regularly.
Circumstances have dictated we be careful with our setup here for the time being...

An update on Kyle...
She's our Ayrshire Pine Marten, as you'll suspect, we visit her domain a couple of times a week, which is around an 8 mile drive each way. We've managed to relocate her 1/2 a mile from the car...so only a mile walk. That has halved the distance we walked for 8 months..the trouble is, I've got this setup all wrong.... I need to work on it...

An update on Craig...
This Marten has been by far the most difficult animal to locate.. it took us many months. When we finally located him, forest operations commenced within weeks... we had to withdraw the camera, but still pop an egg out weekly to keep him passing by.

Twiggy... our new Galloway female pine marten.

We've been scouting this new area for a long time, consistently finding Pine Marten scats on the forest track but have been reluctant to put a camera out because of the walking distance involved. It's roughly an 8 mile circular walk, that's a whole afternoon... We like to keep a close eye on our cameras, partly to keep them safe from forest operations but also to see what the PM's are up to.. This location will be really challenging to monitor especially with dark winter nights rapidly approaching.

Initially we placed eggs at two locations trying to pinpoint an area to camera trap. The first location had 8 scats on the road of differing decomposition. Finding that number of scats at one location is gold dust to us... we call a spot like that 'shit corner,' It seems such a spot is a territory overlap so.. two or more pine marten's.

 The second location we chose due to scat history...

The 'shit corner' location didn't disappoint.

 First to appear was Twiggy, a female with a distinctive bib, she has a few blobs up the middle of her chest and a light coloured left shoulder/neck. Her behaviour is completely different to any other PM we've come across. She pulls the twigs away that forms the egg platform, (hence her name Twiggy) the eggs fall to the ground...she walks around with the branches in her mouth.. bizarre indeed. 

Every other Marten we've found, picks each egg from the platform..

In this clip she actually tries to nuzzle the egg along the ground but has a twig in her mouth at the time...really unusual.

We have landed lucky with this location but, we've learned a lot over the last two years... that's allowed us to more accurately search areas and deploy cameras to best effect.

This blog is for our new PM Twiggy, but we also have a new Male, 'possibly last years Kit' from our adjacent PM territory... and maybe even a third Marten.... 

The second location we decided on hasn't produced any results yet. We still haven't found recent scats  though... looks like the Marten movement has changed in this area... it's roughly 2 miles from location one.

  

 When we search new locations we use less expensive 'scouting cameras'. Bad quality! Having successfully found new Marten's we'll place good quality cameras in order to get proper footage and identification.   

   

  

   

 

We got a proper look at our newly found Pine Marten after putting the Bushnell trail cam in to get descent footage... the  Acorn is only good enough to scout out potential areas.

Kinda sure it's a Male... It's a bit more difficult to tell in winter because all extremities are covered with a thick coat..LOL

He seems an assured individual, quite comfortable in his domain! 

Nice clip all in all with a great snippet of his scent floating off into the cold night air. 

We've named him Kyle, after his forest home.