Pine Martin



These are very rare animals, virtually wiped out in England, but we have two who visit our garden regularly and raid the bird table. Both came last night and Friday night.

Because we hadn’t seen them together, and because we were so surprised to see one, we didn’t realise there were two at first. We called the PM “Gordon”, after the wanna-be PM. We later realised he was a great hulking brute (for a PM) and had a dodgy eye, so the name seemed to stick. No sign of any clunking fist.

Both have a seriously sweet tooth. They raid the bird food; hanging fat balls disappear, fat-filled coconut shells are licked clean, but what goes down best are any left-over pieces of bread and jam. Left for birds - swiped by PMs.

At the moment the PMs are hard to spot because it’s dark so early. I have to get a battery operated security light and fix it under the bird table. They won’t mind the intrusion. Gordon happily tucked into a stale hot-cross-bun while I shot flash photos of him.

I was totally wrong about the weather, Saturday at least. I packed the kayak kit for a quick get-away, but at 7.30am decided I didn’t want to spend the day in the forecast force 6 getting soaked.

Probably wouldn’t do Liz’s cold much good. So we had along walk to the ‘Singing Sands’ near Acharacle with our friend‘s black Labrador ‘Lucy‘ who loves long walks. People leave vast quantities of littler here. While we carry out what we can, there’s always too much. So Liz has left a pot with carrier bags and bin bags and a note, urging visitors to “Please Help! Consider putting some rubbish in a bag and carry it out. Thanks, Liz”. We lugged out some baskets of our own.



Sunday is a cold bright day, perfect for a winter’s paddle, but we’ve accepted invitations to coffee and lunch with different neighbours. It’s that time of the year.