For all their recent spread – they now skirt the edges of several Scottish cities and pop up occasionally even in England as far south as Shropshire – pine martens are still rare and hard to see. Aigas field study centre, with its dedicated hides and long-established feeding programme, must be one of the best places in the country to see them.
The closest I’d come in the previous 40 years were glimpses of a close relative, the beech marten, dead at the sides of Greek roads. So when one came bounding through the shadow towards us, it was a wonderful moment.
The first powerful impressions were of its noiseless movements and shape. The pine marten undulated through the trees in such soft eel-like loops that one could imagine it was an animal lacking in bone and composed merely of muscle and cartilage.
There was one extraordinary moment when it scaled a tree stump to take food from the top. As it rose upwards, the body and tail were pulled taut so that it resembled a furry snake. Then all that liquid flesh was drawn up as if by peristalsis, winding about the top of the stump in python coils of air-filled fur, balanced on an area two inches square.
The long guard hairs on its back, haunches and rear flanks glistened as if they had been sprayed with hair lacquer. The hind neck, head and forelegs had the sort of fur shade you see in photographs of society women of a certain vintage, when sable coats were assumed to be expressions of luxurious style, and not needless cruelty.
Then there was the bib down the chin and upper breast – a mixture of citrus and pale apricot that somehow captured all of our attention throughout its antics.
Oblivious of its audience and the camera shutters, however, it scampered over logs, heaved at stones to uncover food stores, chomped on nuts with open relish, tricked along poles to slurp up honey and faded gradually into the gloom, under pine, until all that was clearly visible were the lemon outlines to two black ears dancing over quick silence.
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