Observing a stone marten in my attic, some questions

Nature Talk
1

Hi,

I’ve recently set up a camera in my attic where a stone marten have been living for at least two years.

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Happy to finally see it (I crossed her path once during a night bike ride tho).

I have a few questions that might sound naïve or silly.

I rent my appartmnt so I don’t really care about the mess the stone marten (I’ve named it Joséfouine, “fouine” being the French name for stone marten… Also it’s a male so the name doesn’t really fit but whatever) does in here, but I’d like the area to be cleaner.

I share my observation of Joséfouine and there’s a litteral poop carpet on the foreground as you can see on the first picture… So I add a mosaic on my vidéos so it less disgusting to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhYMa3EjsE4

Or I crop it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW2vZbgnSeo

My goal is also not to bother or annoy Joséfouine, I like it.

Would it bother it if I remove most of this waste?

Would putting a litter box I can change every few weeks work (I can put some of her dejection in here so it knows that’s the new toilets…)? :sweat_smile:

Would cleaning up other things in her favourite place (the attic), like those black pipes, make her feel unwelcome or bothered? :thinking:

My camera is supposed to have good color capture under low light but I currently film with infrared. Would adding a very faint light (moon-like) to try to have color picture annoy Joséfouine?

2

I wouldn’t mind about it, but if you do, just make sure you get a FFP3 mask, gloves, and disinfect everything with alcohol once you are finished, though.

Does it have regular habits, how long does it leave at night? also out when it rains?
Did you gave it an egg?

No, idea, but again, I would think about my health first (maybe it’s that story about mice feces and the cruise ship…)

Nobody knows what martens think… or Joséfouine… A good light would help, but Stone Martens are strictly nocturnal I believe… so this would be interesting to check! For science ;-)

3

Thank you for your reply!

Yeah, I’ll sure do this! :mask::+1:

It’s currently raining and Joséfouine’s not just above my bedroom. My camera can cover only a very small area of the large attic, tho I often hear it where I can’t see it.

But I never paid attention so I don’t really what its habits are regardless of weather.

Last year, it was very noisy and screaming for one or two weeks. I don’t know these animals at all so I don’t know why it was that much loud. I didn’t even know it was a stone marten yet and it was a bit frightening (especially when it happened while watching a horror movie :face_with_tongue:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1iLJcfvB-k

Joséfouine is usually rather calm and I only hear it from time to time.

On certain occasions, I hear it move (play with?) some stuff in the attic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSgZJwncMrM

If it’s just playing, perhaps I could leave one “toy” to see how it behaves? Like a new piece of wood or something like that? I’m mostly curious and pleased to see it on camera, but also aware that interactions that seem harmful from my perspective can harm wild creatures.

Here’s a short color video of the small area of the attic I can access that I filmed last year when I was exploring it for the first time. We don’t see it well but there was waaay less feces then;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPjokssFHuo

It’s very, very narrow.

Joséfouine’s presence in the attic seems random, but since I never really paid attention, I just don’t know. Now with the camera and timestamps I could put all the observation on a spreadsheets, but I’m a bit too lazy to do this (for now at least).

Daily presence for a long time. It seemed absent for a few months during the autumn last year but I’m not 100% sure :thinking:

I didn’t feed it. I thought it found an egg but looking closer it doesn’t seem smooth enough. I’ve seen it bring food 3 times (one time it was very similar, potato-shaped…) but I haven’t identified what it was.

Here’s a video from today of Joséfouine’s chilling and scratching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvzSqvCcZjU

I can’t imagine how many interesting observations I’ve missed for those 2 last years… But I’m happy that I finally set up the camera!

4

Maybe you had a female with babies last year, I suppose when they are young they are like cats, they jump and play with everything (and maybe mess with those layers of glass wool!)

If you could get the opening used to come in and out in the field of view of the camera, you could know exactly when it’s there and when it’s leaving…

I’m curious about the trail camera, I’ve never seen this logo?

5

Perhaps… But I think I’ve never heard more than one animal at once :thinking:

There are a lot of areas from potential entries that are hidden and inaccessible and leading to other inaccessible areas. The animal could enter and go somewhere else in the attic and I wouldn’t know. It’s very difficult to have a good view :frowning:

I gave up trying to gather information for a proper camera, I was too tired for this, so I ended up buying the same home camera a friend’s using to watch his (human) baby.

It’s a Xiaomi C701, and it’s definitely not the best camera to observe animals (mostly because of how recordings are managed by the app) :face_with_tongue:

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6

Nah… it’s probably better than most trail cameras for this location, they are just more rugged and weatherproof, but few of them have the same 4K + long night/IR videos capabilities.