Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
A Mystery Marten
by admin - 20:01 on 08 November 2010
Pine martens, as I may have mentioned once or twice before, are sneaky creatures. Take last night, for example.
When Matchgirl and I retired to bed, around 11.30, nothing had approached the bounty of nuts, egg and Nutella that we leave out most nights, but ten minutes later, when I had occasion to return downstairs and took a last look out of the living room window, hazelnut spread was being consumed with gusto.
Next, the egg was lapped up, with a great deal of noise, then the visitor leapt onto the windowsill to crunch nuts, raisins and more Nutella. My face was a foot away from his, separated only by the window.
Or was it a him?
The only illumination was the outside light, and on the windowsill the visitor was in shadow, but I could just about make out a bib pattern that belonged to neither Master nor Miss Marten. By the time I'd decided to shine a torch on him, and risk scaring him away, he'd turned to face his left, which made identification difficult – both Master and Miss have their individual markings on the right.
I should have been bold earlier, for the torch didn't bother him at all, even when he looked around to stare directly into the light before getting back to his meal. Either he knows what a window is or he trusts the provider of his suppers not to molest him.
This raises several questions: Is this another visiting marten or are my bib-identifying skills at fault? Could it even be Mister Marten, our regular guest last year? Did he – or she – really wait in the undergrowth, until the lights went out, before beginning his meal or was the timing just coincidence?
I've still got lots to learn about our visitors.
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