It’s that perfect winter day. Temps hover in the mid-20s, big white snowflakes gently fall. Pine boughs fill with heavy snow. It’s beautiful and serene.
Except for my backyard. No peace and quiet there. It’s a madhouse filled with woodpecker “chinks,” whirring chickadee wings, red squirrel chatter.
Compared to many bird feeding enthusiasts, my feeding set-up is very humble. In addition to a suet cage, I offer the neighborhood wildlife a suet tube, a suet ball, and generous amounts of sunflower seeds tossed on the ground. This morning, my feeding areas have been busy as downtown Grand Marais on Fisherman’s Picnic Sunday.
But as I pass the living room window, I notice a sudden quiet. All the birds, not to mention the resident red squirrel, have disappeared. I take a closer look and see a brown smudge, almost hidden by a snowdrift and recognize the silent presence of a pine marten—a sleek, wellfed pine marten. Well-fed thanks to me since I have seen him before, gliding along the deck railing going after the suet cage.
I’ve never seen him eating sunflower seeds, but here he is. Must have decided to put them on his menu. Measuring approximately a foot to a foot and a half long with sleek dark brown fur that contrasts sharply with the white snow, he enthusiastically chomps down sunflower seeds.
I watch as his inquisitive cat-like face occasionally pops up from the snow to sniff the air for danger, then drops back down to feed. I’m fascinated by this very wild creature. Then my washing machine changes to a new cycle with a muffled thud, and the pine marten is gone like a shot, moving with lightning speed along the edge of a storage building and into the woods.
Figuring that’s all the entertainment for this day, I return to laundry chores, but when I stop to glance out the window a few minutes later, Mr. Pine Marten is back at the sunflower seeds. His graceful moments are fascinating to watch. I note that a few birds have strayed back to the sunflower seeds, but the red squirrel stays uncharacteristically quiet, in fact is nowhere to be seen.
During the course of the next hour, the pine marten disappears several more times, skittish at any noise, but reappears to gobble down more seeds. He is one of the cutest wild animals I’ve seen. However, those who’ve seen martens in action describe them as vicious and fierce hunters.
As the day wears on, a number of birds, especially the pine grosbeaks return to the edges of the feeding area, but not the red squirrel. According to Mark Stensaas in Canoe Country Wildlife, A Field Guide to the North Woods and Boundary Waters, pine martens are the only mammal with the ability to pursue and catch red squirrels in trees. That explains why my resident red squirrel has disappeared, not to return till tomorrow.
Late afternoon, the pine marten finally makes his grand exit, and as I watch him streak into the snow-filled underbrush, assume that he’ll be back. Too many good eats here.
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