How a volunteer's patience led to a rewarding den box surprise

For many of our volunteers, monitoring a pine marten den box is one of the most popular volunteer roles, as the prospect of seeing footage of pine marten activity on your land or monitoring patch is an exciting one. It is a vital role as well, providing useful information on pine marten expansion and population establishment in our Strategic Recovery Areas, but it can feel a bit thankless after a while with no sign of pine marten interest.

A year of waiting then a rewarding sight...

One volunteer in the Scottish Borders didn’t expect to see much of interest when she retrieved the SD card from the trail camera at her den box. It was a year to the day since her den box was installed and previous checks had shown the odd grey squirrel, or tawny owl, but no pine martens.

You can imagine her amazement and delight when she found 30 videos of pine marten activity at the den box taking place over about four weeks from early November!

A fascinating story unfolded with each video, beginning with the pine marten’s first careful exploration around the outside of the den box. A week later it returned for a cautious look inside the den box, and it must have been happy with what it found because it stayed for a three-and-a-half-hour kip before heading out again. 

Over the next fortnight the marten returned frequently to use the den box as a resting place. It was bitterly cold during this period, the temperature dropped as low as -1 degrees and was regularly around zero, so the den box provided a nice cosy place for the marten to rest and stay warm.  Then after a few days absence, our marten returned for a brief two minutes in the den box before departing again.

On a misty afternoon three days later, it returned and hung about nervously under the den box while something chirruped and yapped and clattered about in the woods. A sudden crashing of branches sent the marten scurrying into the den box. By now the temperature had risen to between 5 and 6 degrees.

The next video of the marten leaving the den box occurred almost 30 hours later. Was it really in the den box all that time?  Or did the trail camera not pick up activity between these times? Sometimes trail cameras do miss some of the action, though this camera seemed to have captured a clear and plausible narrative of events up until then, so maybe the pine marten just had a very long nap after his fright in the woods!  This was the last record of the marten at the den box between then and the SD card being retrieved two months later.    

This sequence of events gives a rare glimpse into life in the woods and the vital role den boxes play supporting the recovery of pine martens across our Strategic Recovery Areas.

If you’re a volunteer who checks den box trail cameras month after month this is a perfect reminder that your efforts matter even when it feels like nothing is happening. So don’t give up, and bear in mind that monitoring den boxes outside of the natal season (when pine marten mothers give birth and raise their kits) might just deliver some wonderful footage!

Get involved

If you have seen a pine marten, please report a sighting to the National Pine Marten Monitoring Programme.  

If you have a woodland in the Tweed Valley and would like to host a pine marten den box, please get in touch at enquiries@vwt.org.uk.  

Victoria Chanin, Martens on the Move Project Officer Scottish/English Border