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.