More Pine Marten Sightings
The last thing I did during my April visit to Lofftwen was to set three camera traps. A month later I returned eager to see what if anything they had managed to capture, but also keenly aware, due to a mixture of bad luck and inexperience, I’m more often than not disappointed left somewhat disappointed. This time would be different, although it didn’t start out that way.
The first camera I checked, which I left by the new wildlife pond just a few metres from the Longhouse, had failed to work at all. Not a single image. Particularly disappointing as when I was reversing the car on the long journey back to London a couple of geese landed, so I had left with high spirits.
I headed off to check the second two cameras with a heavy heart. These are much further from civilisation, the third in particular being a real treck. As I swapped over the memory cards and trudged back to base I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up.
With a cup of tea in hand, I loaded up the first of these two cards, and chose the one I was least excited about. As I waded through countless footage of waving trees and the odd pigeon I nearly fell off my perch when a mammal about the size of a cat with a big bushy tail trotted past before stopping to stare right at the camera. It was of course a pine marten. Just this one sighting was enough to make all the effort worthwhile and I was dizzy with excitement. This wan’t the first sighting of pine marten on a camera trap [this will link to a previous post], it was probably the third, but it was my first capture, and I thought it was perhaps a sign my luck with camera traps was turning.
I loaded the second memory card with eager anticipation. I had chosen this location because it was an established fox earth where I’ve been lucky enough to phtograph fox cubs for the past two years. I had hoped to see the dog fox we regularly see at the brid hide bringing food back to the earth and even the vixen emerging with the cubs. Although there were plenty of files to view (again mostly grasses in the wind and one particularly committed mouse) there were no foxes at all. I tried to hide my disappointment at a beautiful sighting of a roe buck resplendent with antlers and a couple of sightings of Mr Badger. Then suddenly there was the pine marten, this time during the day in full colour. It only last a few seconds as it trots past the camera, but the quality of footage from the new Helarctos camera trap was magnificent.
The viewing angle of these cameras is pretty tight. So the chances of capturing two pine marten from the only two camera traps over Lofftwen’s 320 acres seemed remarkable. It appears my luck with these things might have changed afterall. Although before jumping to too many conclusions, perhaps we should see what May brings first…