East Pole Journal V. II, No. 5: Morning visitor

A Pine Marten takes a perch in a birch

     As I stepped through the doorway this morning, motion in my peripheral vision alerted me in time to watch a bushy tail disappear off the south end of the deck. I ran over in time to see a fairly large animal, perhaps the size of a larger cat, hopping through the snow toward shelter of a small stand of fairly sizeable birch trees. I kept watching and in time recognized just the silhouette of its head and ears. I turned and ran for my camera. 

 This is the first, blurry, shot.

     Locating the animal in the viewfinder immediately told me this wasn’t going to amount to much and then two big eyes reflected back through the through the lens. Snap. It seemed to take forever for the camera’s system to recover from the first flash, but eventually it did. This time I gave it a few seconds with a lightly depressed shutter to let the camera make its own adjustments for focus, aperture and shutter speed and then I got one more shot. I have to tell you that is the luckiest photo I ever took in my life. When I first downloaded and saw it, all I could really see were two smaller eyes shining at me in the dark. But when I lightened the picture, the whole animal showed up. And, that’s the big picture at the top here. The smaller one is the first one I snapped, totally hurried and out of focus, but the eyesn shined through and allowed me to take my time for the second shot.

     When I looked again it had left the perch. Later I saw it run into the stand of spruce a little downhill from the cabin and from there run off to the southwest. Later I saw tracks in the snow along the whole north side of the cabin and then disappearing over the hill but later fund tracks where it had circled the whole house. Wondering now if I need to lock. the door.

Some interesting comments from facebook:

• Joe May

  This is a gift. Many people spend a lifetime up here without seeing one in the wild. I've heard it's possible to habituate them to come for food and be a regular visitor.

  

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  • Carla Helfferich

    Joe May

     Yes, we had one lured to the gray jays' feeding station by the remains of an ancient ice cream cake. That one had a sweet tooth, and returned often all winter for toast and jam or stale cookies.

    

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• Sharon Wright

  Dave & our partner John had to trap two that broke into the old (1917s-30s) Johnson/Hajdukovitch cabin on Central Creek while they were in the cabin, hissing when they were confronted. They were after the food and were not going to be deterred by a couple of humans and kept up the onslaught until the traps were set. When I went out on those claims in 1982, I had to dig out a whole corner full of porcupine and bear poop so we could make it good enough to spend a couple nights in. It's still out there as of 2016.

  

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  • Joe May

    Sharon Wright

     Wayne and Scarlett Hall live across the river and a few miles downstream from Eagle. When I visited there last a few years ago they had one that came in after lights out at night. He/she came in through a flap in the door, made the rounds, prospected for scraps and left silently. A traveling partner who was sleeping on the couch woke to find (Modoc" perched on his stomach watching his chest rise and fall.. once in a lifetime experience.

East Pole Journal