We have an old country house in the arse end of Leitrim. Whenever we are up there I leave out left-over foods and scraps which are always taken by an animal. I always thought it was a fox but was pleased to see this guy the other day. He's trying to get to the bird feeder we have hanging outside the window.
It's quite rare to see pine martens but I heard that in the midlands, pine martens and red squirrel populations are on the increase because pine matrens have no natural predators and red squirrels naturally know how to avoid pine martins which would be one of their predators.
Apparently you don't see many grey squirrels in the midlands because they are not native and don't know how to avoid pine martens.
As you can imagine, rats and mice are a problem out in the country so having a pine marten arounds helps.
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FrankLucker
3 comments
Wow, very cool!
Very cool OP, thanks for posting. Never seen a pine marten in real life, but when I hear about them always think of how they’ve helped with the red/grey squirrel issue.
Oh! You should think about sending this into the Springwatch/Winterwatch team!