Wild Thing

An aspen leaf. It's had a good life wobbling in the breeze. Now it's laid to rest.

The nights are drawing in, and doing a bit of colouring in as well. A new carpet of orangey-brown leaves is being laid everywhere especially around my caravan where the aspens grow (they like to be the first to shed all their leaves). There was a spate of cold nights reaching 1.5 degrees C at the lowest. My fingers that morning were quickly numbed as I spent an hour picking salad leaves, I could barely tie knots in the bags afterwards.

It's pitch black by 7pm which means it's always dark by the time I've finished supper in the caravan and cycle up to my home. I tend to leave my bicycle parked near the top of my land's access track next to a majestic old oak. There's a hole in the bank just next to the tree at about eye-level and on Thursday as I reached for my bike my headtorch happened to shine directly into the hole and I was startled to see two eyes glinting back at me. They belonged to a mammal, quite a large one. I could see its front half. It had brown fur with markings on its face. It didn't seem fazed by my light but just stared back or looked nonchalantly off to one side. After almost a minute of this it eventually decided to retreat inside its den.

The polecat den is just after that large trunk on the left. You can't see it in this photo.

I'm pretty sure it was a polecat after an extensive Google Images search on my return home. Polecats are not so rare these days apparently though it's the first one I've ever seen. It's possible it was a feral ferret. Ferrets are the domesticated version of polecats and are very similar looking. They can also interbreed with polecats to create hybrid polecat-ferrets, also difficult to distinguish. But I think it was probably a polecat. I've reported it to the Vincent Wildlife Trust who are currently running their third 2-year survey of polecat sightings across Britain (dead or alive).

Otters are supposed to be living along the river here too. The ecologist who did my Preliminary Ecological Assessment in 2013 didn't find any evidence on my land but that didn't stop him writing of their probable existence in his report. Neighbours have said they've seen them further up the valley. But I've yet to catch a glimpse of one.

My entire sweetcorn harvest. Better luck next year.

What you really want to see here in Snowdonia is the pine marten. This is the second rarest British mammal after the wildcat. They're doing OK up in Scotland but here the population numbers are tiny and not growing. This has prompted the Vincent Wildlife Trust to boost the Welsh population by bringing a few down from Scotland and hoping they get on with the local Welsh ones. A few came last month and more are on their way according to this press release . It doesn't say exactly where they've released them but I'm hoping one wanders past my caravan soon. Camera at the ready!

Oh no! one of my two decent squashes has split