The days when pine martens could chase red squirrels from Inverness to Dumfries without touching the ground are long gone. Indeed, martens were extinct from this area until a successful reintroduction 40 years ago.
Today, Dumfries and Galloway Pine Marten Group (DGPMG) is doing its bit to help this fragile population by installing 40 bespoke “marten dens” across Galloway forests. The group monitors these wooden boxes using trail cameras, which enable them to detect a heat source inside all year round – especially important in spring when pine marten kits are born, and winter when den boxes are used for shelter. Pine martens would normally prefer large tree cavities for their dens, but such aged trees are scarce here.
I only know of this project because of a chat I had at my local pub with a founding member of DGPMG. I’d been in Galloway Forest just that morning; it was alive with the sound of the great spotted woodpecker’s jackhammer, the sweet whistling tone of a nuthatch and the distant whirring of a chainsaw. I saw a goldcrest among long-tailed tits, roe deer, red squirrels the colour of burnt chocolate orange.
Armed with this new information, I returned to the forests on a moonlit night carrying a large torch and a hip flask. As it happened, I did not need the light, because after half an hour, a distinctive and shapely silhouette slunk across an upper branch like an arboreal highwayman, flushing in a frightful clatter of wings a roosting cock pheasant. Then it vanished into the darkness. My favourite British mammal by a country mile.
It was brief, but thrilling. More importantly, the new technology has recorded a significant increase in the local pine marten population over the past year. This has, in part, been attributed to a rise in vole numbers (itself a slightly unknown phenomenon and the subject of much ongoing research).
As for the fine specimen I saw, I raised my flask of Aberlour malt to it and said to myself, in the style of Robert Burns, who was no stranger to these parts: “It’s a braw bricht moonlit nicht the nicht” (It’s a lovely, bright moonlit night tonight.)
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