Mar Lodge with team Pine Marten

Laura Kubasiewicz and David Bavin are currently staying at Forest lodge while they research the habits of local pine martens for Laura’s PhD.  Having collected data from Abernethy they are now collecting hair tube (a tube that the pine marten climbs up to get bait and in the process leaves hair on a strategically positioned sticky pad) and scat samples from Mar Lodge.  I was lucky enough to tag along with Laura and Dave for the day to see Mar Lodge and get a bit more experience in collecting samples (with blue sterile gloves on)

Mar Lodge is a massive estate owned by the National Trust.  At first sight it seems idyllic, with beautiful fast flowing burns and stately granny pines mixed with the odd colourful larch.  However, a little more thought and I realised that all is not so well on the estate.  There are a good number of snags (standing dead trees, in this case scots pines, likely to have died in the last 50 years), and some fallen dead wood, and there appears to be very little significantly sized regeneration.  Having said that, it appears that the National Trust Scotland (NTS) are on the case.  They have recently opened up their management plan for consultation and the reduction in deer numbers over the last 5 years has started to lead to significant changes in the ground flora, and an increase in seedlings.

As for the pine martens, we found lots of scat and some hair in one of Laura’s hair tubes.  Pine martens have quite big territories, but Laura can find out how big by genetically testing the hair from the hair tubes.  This allows her to determine individuals and their gender.