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 Guest
by admin - 22:04 on 05 March 2012
Strangely, Matchgirl refuses to spend the evening with the outside light as The Rural Retreat's sole illumination, so last night I took advantage of her latest Shetland sojourn to lie in wait for marten visitors. I wasn't disappointed.
Just after 8pm, through the living room window a nimble form could be seen making its way across the top bar of the gate towards the Nutella, bold enough to ignore the torch beam turned on it in an attempt to find identifying markings.
I had plenty of time to examine the diner and conclude that this was a marten I've not snapped – certainly not Miss Marten or any other of last year's visitors who favoured me with a close-up view. My guess is that this was a female, probably one of last year's kits.
The gate licked clean, she examined the base of the gate, scurried into the bushes then reappeared from them further up the garden and ran up The Nutella Tree in search of more sustenance.
After downloading the Bushnell this morning I found her image captured along with a slightly larger marten a couple of hours later and an even larger one at around 4am. I couldn't identify who they were.
At the time of writing, no martens have visited tonight. However, I can be patient; last night's was a good sighting and there'll be much better ones to come. This will be of little consequence to Squirrel James, now that he's snapped a wild capercaillie, but it makes me happy. And I'm not jealous in the slightest.
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