Pine Marten 001

The American Pine Marten is one of my favorite North Shore creatures. They are very agile climbers and spend much of their time in the trees. They are very territorial and each one will claim about three square miles of boreal forest. It takes them about 6 to 8 days to hunt their whole territory. That seems to be true for this little guy as he shows up at our house about once every one to two weeks. Sometimes we only see tracks but other times we see him right outside our door.

PineMarten001

Pine Marten 002

The other day Karla happened to be looking out the window and saw the pine marten running along the top of the snow. This old cedar log is behind our house so I got my camera ready just in case he was inquisitive enough to investigate the inside of the log. We have lots of red squirrels that eat at our bird feeder and the pine marten feeds on the red squirrels that go in and out of this cedar log. Just as I had the camera focused on the log he stuck his front feet and head out to look around. We felt very fortunate to have been there at just the right time.

PineMarten002