Scots pine martens caught playing on kids' swingset in adorable footage
dailyrecord.co.ukPine martens have been caught on camera adorably playing on kids’ swingset at night in the Highlands.The footage, taken by Les Humphreys from Ardnamurchan, shows two of the rare creatures play-fighting and climbing up rope swings - a nightly occurrence in his garden.Conservation work in Scotland has been hailed for sparking a spectacular turnaround in pine marten populations in recent decades.The native woodland mammal - a cat-sized member of the weasel family - can be spotted in Highland areas like the Cairngorms as well parts of the Trossachs and the Borders.The footage of the cheeky pine marten pair was taken by Les Humphreys, of Ardnamurchan Wildlife Watch, and posted on social media by the Mammal Society.The playmates are male cousins and thought to be one and two years old respectively.The group said: “The owner of the video, Les Humphreys, tells us this is a nightly occurrence in his garden… pine martens are one of the rarest native mammals in Britain.“These native carnivores were among Britain’s most common mammals, but were pushed to the brink of extinction in the face of hunting and the loss of their woodland homes over the past two centuries.”Pine martens have been a protected species in Scotland since 1988, and since then numbers have recovered from an earlier dramatic decline to around 3700 at present.The animals remain critically endangered in England and Wales, although they’ve recently been successfully reintroduced to the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire in a bid to revive the species south of the border.Pine martens help maintain a healthy forest ecosystem - and act as natural predators against grey squirrels which have long spread disease among Scotland’s tiny, critically threatened native red
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