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...
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