Our little friend

I remember many years ago on either Spring or Autumn watch seeing a video of someone who had a pine marten living in their loft. It ran along the gutters in a very comical way. We really, really wanted to see one in the flesh. Problem is that they don't live in England, at least not in the south, anymore. We did go, twice, to the Speyside wildlife hide near Aviemore and had quite good views of one coming in but its pretty expensive!! We've never managed to get to "find" our own one in the wild.
This year at our cottage in Applecross I did half hold out some hope of having one around as we are in a good area for them and miles away from anywhere. Once we had got to the house and unpacked we had a quick look in the visitors book. Alway interesting to see what people had thought of the house and what was around. One thing that was mentioned by lots of guests was a PINE MARTEN was being seen on the terrace. This created a lot of excitement. We also saw that there was a very architectural log just outside the windows. So, once we had our tea we put some assorted peanuts and porridge oats on and near the log and sat down to watch TV.

Almost as soon as it got dark we saw a movement on the terrace. It was only a pine marten popping up bold as brass. I was nowhere near set up to photograph it and so there was a bit of a comedic half hour as I found lenses, tripods and tried to work out how to switch on the terrace lights. The pine marten was clearly totally used to all this and didn't worry about the two of us blundering around.
For the 7 nights we were in the house it came on 6 of them. On the only one we didn't see it the weather was awful but we did see a badger on a remote camera I had set up.

The food we put out became increasingly varied including peanut butter, which it very much liked, and boiled eggs, which were its favourites. Peanuts were popular as well.

It was a totally amazing thing to see. We're not sure if it was a male or a female but we certainly became very fond of it. When we left we were hoping there next visitors would continue to supply the tea every night. It would be great if they managed to make it down south but I suspect we will have to wait for out Scotland holiday to get our next fix!