Two days ago we noticed something with very sharp teeth had chewed the top and lid of our squirrel peanut feeder. We speculated that we either had a new (less clever) pine marten visiting or ‘our’ one had amnesia and had forgotten how to lift the lid for the box. The box had two large chunks bitten off and the lid was completely ripped off; the rubber hinge (bike inner tube) was torn off the screws that held it in place.
This evening we saw the culprit. This pine marten has a distinguishing white mark on the left of its nose (you can see it in the short video below), which was not present on the pine marten we saw previously.
It started by going for the ‘bite chunks off the lid’ technique, but that didn’t work, so it attacked the back instead. No, that wasn’t working so it jumped around going for a different position for attack. The chrome washers are where we repaired the hinge that was ripped off two days earlier. Just before the pine marten arrived Neil had covered these washers with black tape so it would look better in photos. This tape lasted all of one hour! 🙂
