Advice on pinemartin

Leave them be and they will leave you be.

Is the pine-martin a ‘house pet’ and kept in a cage usually….or did he come into your gaff ‘uninvited’ …?

A young pine martin can get thru a 45mm gap so a poly tunnel would easy.Maybe looking for live food.

I'd deter them from the tunnell if possible, no wild animal likes to feel cornered and these lads are well equiped to defend themselves if needed.. Other than that if you've chickens as mentioned above you will need extreme measures to protect them.. If youve no poultry then no worries.. Enjoy seeing them about..

Steer clear, they are dangerous if cornered, they don't flee either when they see a threat so trying to hunt them on will not work. Had one kill 9 turkeys on us one November, laid them all in a line outside the pen.

Probably did originally, but the greys are bigger so a better meal.

Saw my first ever red last year near Blessington, so something's working.

they do buy Red Squirrels are wary of them, and can climb a tree faster than a grey squirell.

To my understanding, the Pine marten will prey on anything of suitable size that it can catch. This obviously includes Red squirrels.

The "that it can catch" bit is where the Red squirrel lives. The Red is relatively light, nimble, and fast compared to the Grey. They (the Reds) can get to places the Grey can't, and to where the Pine marten can't pursue them.

I've seen Reds here run out onto the smallest of twigs on the end of branches and jump a 2 meter gap onto similarly small twigs in the next tree like it was nothing. The Pine marten simply can't follow. Under the same circumstances, a bigger and heavier Grey squirrel couldn't get out as far on the twigs to make the jump, and would be stuck in the tree with its pursuer.

Also, Greys spend a lot more of their time on the ground, which leaves them more exposed, affords them fewer avenues of escape, and makes them much more vulnerable to predation.

The Red and the Pine marten evolved together here in Ireland, and under normal circumstances, the squirrels are well able to out-reproduce the numbers predated by the Pine marten.

They prefer the grey squirrel.Easier to catch apparently.Mfman has got it,too

Had one under my kitchen sink one time. Myself and my vet caught him with a pair of welding gloves and let him off to the nearest ditch. He didn’t come back thankfully

I was about to ask this. With all this talk of how dangerous they are (they're tiny!), is there any evidence at all to support this? Is it a bit like the nonsense about badgers breaking your leg with their massive powerful jaws and huge gnashing teeth?

I have pine martens around my house and I love them. I caught a few on camera and they're beautiful little things.

Whatever about Pine Martens, I wouldn't like to face a Wolverine.

That's a bit misleading. The mink we have in Ireland are American mink, and they're typically bigger than pine martens. Also, a mink is a heftier animal than a pine marten. Pine martens are almost unnaturally lithe, like a shoelace that has come to life. Really beautiful to watch them in action.