Pine Martens... at Applecross

Our week in Autumnal Applecross saw some spectacularly poor weather- but it served our purpose which was to embrace Autumn. We had a good walk each day and each day we were soaked to the skin. Saw an otter on our first day down at Toscaig - the light was rubbish and it was again hunting along the far side of the inlet so too far away for any decent photographs but great to watch it hunt and eat. Such a joy to see our first pine marten at 6.30 AM on first morning. Dark, big, Sumatra rat grey at that time of the morning! However a feed of Peanut butter, homemade blackberry jam, fig rolls and chocy digestives- showed we had two martens- a cute, small, chocolate brown one and a big gnarly snaggle toothed snick eared one. We couldn't work out at first why the marten suddenly showed up and was so brashly confident- then on looking at the snaps we spotted the snick in the ear and the general largeness and roughness of the confident pine marten. We ended up having the excellent good fortune to see the small pine marten every night at about 6.00- 8.30pm. Awesome, delightful creatures- we love them and are so thrilled to finally see them after so many years leaving peanut butter around. :-)