Many of our guests have had the experience of looking out their cabin windows and seeing an adorable creature looking back at them from below the bird feeder.
If you don’t recognize this little guy, you’re not alone. Most of their range is in Canada, and this is the only part of Minnesota and one of the only parts of the US where you can see one. They’re commonly called pine martens, although officially they’re American martens – they’re not the same as the “pine martens” that live in Europe.
Pine martens are mustelids (like weasels and otters) and are about 24 to 30 inches long and weigh 1 to 3 pounds. They have reddish-brown fur with darker legs and a lighter patch on their throats, a long bushy tail, and rounded ears.
Pine marten diet
As cute as they are, you may not expect them to be vicious hunters, but pine martens can take down prey as big as a rabbit or a squirrel. More commonly, they rely on small rodents like voles. They also eat fruit, seeds, and insects, especially in summer.
We discovered pretty quickly after buying Bearskin in 2007 that the local pine martens were already familiar with a great place to satisfy their varied dietary needs – our dumpsters. They’re very difficult to keep out, since they can slide into the tiniest cracks. They like to pull out a whole pile of items and then pick through it, eating their favorites and leaving the rest behind. At this point, we’ve simply accepted pine martens in our dumpsters as a part of Bearskin life.
The life of a pine marten
Pine martens are solitary creatures except during breeding season. Although breeding happens in the summer, the embryos don’t start implanting and growing until late winter, and the female martens give birth to 1-5 kits in the spring, using dens that they’ve lined with moss and leaves. These dens can be anything from a tree cavity to a pile of branches to an abandoned squirrel’s nest. The kits stay with mom through the summer and go off on their own in the fall.
American martens have been known to live to be up to 15 years old, but many dangers face them in the wild. Eagles, hawks, foxes, wolves, lynx, and humans (due to our trapping season in MN) are all known predators.
They’re well adapted to winter, with warm coats and broad feet that allow them to run on top of the snow. They also travel and hunt extensively under the snowpack.
Where to see a pine marten
You might catch a glimpse of a pine marten anywhere in the area, any season. But guests see them most often under the birdfeeders in winter. Pine martens would prefer to catch a prey animal, but they’re happy to accept an easy meal of seeds.
What other animals look like pine martens?
The animal most likely to be mistaken for a pine marten is a fisher. We have those at Bearskin too, but they’re much more reclusive. You might also see minks, which are similar in body type, but typically smaller and darker. Minks are semi-aquatic and generally seen near the water.
Are pine martens endangered?
Pine martens are doing well in Minnesota and are not considered threatened or endangered. But it wasn’t always that way. Before the late 1800s, pine martens were abundant here, but much of their habitat was lost to logging, and they were trapped in large numbers. By the 1920s, there were hardly any martens in Minnesota, and they were still thought to be extinct in the state as late as the 1950s. Luckily, their population has returned to stable numbers in northern Minnesota. Pine marten populations were lost in several other states, so we’re lucky to have them here!
Check out this funny video of a pine marten in a birdfeeder.