First camera trap wildlife: a pine marten.

 

Having seen an increasing number of camera trap wildlife images online in recent years I decided to try this myself and ordered a trail cam. It arrived a few days ago and I set up in the garden and left it overnight as a test. The first morning revealed a good shot of the first chaffinch arriving on a bird feeder and something very blurred at the edge of some bushes. At least it was working.

The second night I was surprised and delighted to see the above image of a pine marten having a good look at the trail cam. This was exciting!

We had seen a pine marten in the garden once, quite a few years ago, and occasionally seen droppings, so kew they were around. I suspected they were rare visitors to the garden though and if I did get a picture of one it might take weeks or months. To get one so quickly suggests that they might visit quite often. This one is only a few feet from the house too.

My plan had been to see what a few nights in the garden captured and then move the camera into nearby woods. I'm going to keep it in the garden a bit longer now. I want to see if a pine marten comes round again. I'll try video soon too.

For those interested I bought my trail cam from NatureSpy, which I found via a web search. Knowing nothing about these cameras I used the camera chooser on the site, looked at ones that had good image quality, read a few reviews, and selected the Browning Recon Force Elite HP4. It proved easy to set up (though I got the date wrong at first, as you can see in the image) and comes with a wide locking strap to attach it to posts and tree trunks.