Pine marten spotted by nightcam in London

[Wowbagger]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/pine-marten-spotted-in-london-for-first-time-in-more-than-a-century

That's utterly amazing.

[Kim]

It was probably using Google Maps...

[Wobbly John]

I am still convinced I saw one come bustling out of a hedge in Dunwich on the Dun Run 2008(?) - defintely a large, cat sizeish, mustelid blackish with a whitish bib.

[Wowbagger]

I am still convinced I saw one come bustling out of a hedge in Dunwich on the Dun Run 2008(?) - defintely a large, cat sizeish, mustelid blackish with a whitish bib.

Crikey!

[The Family Cyclist]

I am still convinced I saw one come bustling out of a hedge in Dunwich on the Dun Run 2008(?) - defintely a large, cat sizeish, mustelid blackish with a whitish bib.

Could it have been a polecat?


When we were in NI recently the campsite warden said pine martens were regular visitors to the site but we weren't fortunate enough to see them

[ian]

Pine martens are smaller than polecats, so I'd assume polecat first. I don't think they're cat-sized. Or some polecat-ferret combo. The British Wildlife Centre near us has plenty of pine martens scampering around. Possibly they should count them.

[Wowbagger]

I beg to differ, m'lud. Pine martens are considerably larger than polecats.

https://www.vwt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/MustelidLeaflet.pdf

[Peter]

I agree with Wow.  And even though the (very) odd one has been seen in London, I think it is much more likely to have been a ferret, which is effectively what a polecat is.  And ferrets are kept as pets, throughout the land.  People who keep martens as pets are recognisable as only have one arm.  If it appeared to be the size of a cat, then that is a complicating factor because a pine marten is more that size and has a much longer cat-length tail, whereas the ferret's is shorter.  But again, I don't think a marten has a white bib, whereas a ferret can.  All very intriguing!

[Wowbagger]

The photo in the article I linked to in the OP is clearly a pine marten - its legs are much longer than a polecat's or a ferret's in relation to its body. Given that the camera belongs to the Zoological Society of London, I suppose we ought to give them credence of being able to identify a British mammal. According to that article, the photo was taken on 3rd July, but the article was dated 8th September.

And pine martins do normally have white undersides.



Whereas polecats don't.

[Mrs Pingu]

Oh their faces are totally different.

Years ago Pingu & I went on a walking holiday in the Austrian Alps. Finkenberg, near Mayrhofen.
One evening we were walking down a forest path towards Mayrhofen when something darted out of the trees onto the path.
"It's a kitty!" I said.
"No, it's a kitten"
"No, it's a funny kind of cat"<sup>1

1</sup> Captain Corelli's Mandolin was a popular book at the time, and the "funny kind of cat" was a pine marten.

[ian]

They always look smaller but they’re scampering overhead so maybe they are just bigger but further away.

In other news, please remember the prohibition on mentioning That Book.

[Mrs Pingu]

Bollocks to the prohibition.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I saw a pine marten in a forest in Poland about ten years ago. I can't remember where I was when I read Captain Corelli's Mandolin but it was a lot more than ten years ago.

[ian]

Bollocks to the prohibition.

The only good use of that book is to stun albino assassins.

[Mrs Pingu]

Well I liked it, and all the South American ones as well so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[Wowbagger]

We saw one in Ireland, not far from the Templehouse Lake, about 20 years ago and friends we were cycling with saw one that had a dead blackbird in its mouth. That was in the Oban area. Jan and I were on the tandem at the time and therefore a long way behind them.  We didn’t see it.

[Wowbagger]

Oh their faces are totally different.

Missed opportunity for the forum’s favourite mustelids joke there, ma’am!

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Saw them quite frequently in the Limousin, invariably after dark when at first I thought they were a cat with a strange gait. One of them overwintered in my outhouse loft. It was a very messy creature. Most people kept chickens round those parts but didn’t seem unduly bothered by either pine martens or foxes. 

[rogerzilla]

Save The Pine Weasel!

BenWeasel by rogerzilla, on Flickr

[Jaded]

I saw a copy in our local bookshop.

[T42]

Well I liked it, and all the South American ones as well so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I liked the 27* bars rest.

* or whatever.

[JellyLegs]

Pine marten seem to be popping up in lots of unexpected places over the last year or so.  It is thought that there is an unsanctioned but deliberate release scheme going on.

https://www.waterliferecoverytrust.org.uk/wre-news/camera-trap-reveals-surprise-visitor/

[Salvatore]

I saw a pine marten while riding the Daylight 600 many years ago. It was probably between 4 and 5 a.m. somewhere not long before the Benderloch control (i.e. near Oban). It was running along the road ahead of me, quite unconcerned by my presence, until it disappeared into the forest, so I got a good look. My first thought was "fox!", then "no, cat!", then "I wonder what that was".

Duncan Peat, the controller at Benderloch, identified it as a pine marten and was dead jealous because he'd never seen one.