Pine Martens, Badgers and Wildcats

The Lookout at Glen Tanar was developed by Colin McClean several years ago and was originally an old estate cottage. It had been disused for years when Colin started a project to make it into a hide for viewing pine martens.

The idea was to make an area for people to watch and photograph the animals that visited.

A lot of work was done to make various tree and branch arrangements in front of the hide for the pine martens to climb over. The area was floodlit with daylight lamps as most of the visits would be at night.

Jam and peanut butter was put out to see what it would attract.

It wasn’t long before several pine martens became regular visitors, sometimes with kits. Work continued in making the area more interesting for visitors and photographers.

The pine martens have distinctive dark markings on their peach bibs and for some reason we tend to give animals names. One was very easy to name as it had no tail so ‘Tailless’ became its name. We don’t know why it had no tail, perhaps an accident or a fight.

A family of badgers were the next to arrive and became regular visitors. A mother and her three cubs would come in, the cubs were a bit more hesitant but the lure of peanuts was too much to resist.

On one overnight visit she brought in the three cubs, they had their fill of peanuts and were taken off to bed. She made a return visited later and had a few peanuts for herself. I noticed that she had gone very quiet and then realised that she had fallen asleep just in front of me, tired out by the antics of the cubs.

On previous occasions I had heard cats fighting and Colin had told me that a wildcat had been visiting the area. One evening I arrived at the Lookout and was waiting for Colin when I decided to test a new night vision camera. I looked down the track I had come along and there was a cat staring straight back at me. I managed to get an image on the camera and it was gone. Later that evening the cat reappeared in the area in front of the hide and climbed over the fallen logs to get to its favourite food, peanut butter. The cat stayed and tucked into the peanut butter for about 15 mins before leaving. That was my first encounter with this wildcat and encounters were repeated a few more times over the years. The cat was well marked and a good specimen, probably as good as it’s possible to see these days.

Many nights have been spent in the Lookout in all weathers but the effort and lack of sleep and home comforts has always been worth it!