Pine Marten by Dan Bagur

Pine Marten: The Secret Life of Martes martes

By Dan Bagur

Pelagic Publishing 2025

“A savage soul, the marten usually hates everyone, including the members of its family,” wrote an ardent outdoorsman eighty years ago. “The only exceptions are man, when curiosity gets the upper hand, and its mate or mates. During pairing season, its spirit mellows as far as the latter is concerned, but it is more ferocious than ever if any possible rivals appear.”

This impression is saved by that nearly parenthetical mention of humans being exceptions to the universal savagery of the pine marten; plenty of avid hikers and campers can attest to the friendly inquisitiveness of martens, who are often confident enough to take pinches of food directly from the hands of humans they’ve never seen before. And this kind of exception must be extremely congenial to pine marten expert and filmmaker (The Secret Life of the European Pine Marten, naturally) Dan Bagur, whose gorgeously-illustrated new book, Pine Marten: The Secret Life of Martes martes, takes a decidedly cheerleading tone in reference to these murderous mustelids. “Pine Martens are unique: they are full of personality, courage and inquisitive charm,” he writes, momentarily forgetting that pine martens are virtually identical in these traits to sables, weasels, fishers, and most otters. “They draw you into their world.”

Much the same can be said very enthusiastically about Bagur’s book, which draws the reader deep into the world of the pine marten. And although the book is full of color photos of martens with their attentive, triangular faces, it’s surely no slur that the path into that world leads through a good deal of poop. Certainly the book sports many a lovingly up-close and detailed shot of pine marten scat, all of it in the oddly curlicue shape that has led some marten aficionados to wonder if these little creatures wiggle while defecating. According to Bagur, not so: “I observed that most of the time when defecating the hips are held in a fixed position,” he reports, “the animal will stop all activity and freeze (sometimes mid-sprint), perhaps to avoid accidentally defecating on themselves, to push the scat out, or possibly to ensure that the scat is properly coated with mucus from the anal scent glands on the way out.”

Although it shouldn’t be construed as a warning, it’s nonetheless true that these kinds of cloacal details occur throughout the book, but there’s far more than crap to learn about here. Bagur has studied every aspect of pine marten biology and behavior, their predation habits, communication subtleties, and of course conservation challenges, with a dense appended “Further Reading” section. And all of it is braided with an overt sense of wonder that makes the whole book an oddly wonderful reading experience:

Pine Martens are bright-eyed and full of energy. These masters of the woods can crawl through a tree hold just 7 cm wide. They can jump five times their own body length. Fearless at height. They can climb almost anything and leap from towering treetops. Fearless at night, they can run 30 km across rugged woodland terrain in nearly total darkness. Fearless in a fight, they will protect their forest home from rival Martens. When they need to rest, they find a hole, sleep for a few hours and then get up and do it all over again.

This feeling, that you’re reading a book about pine martens not only by one of their foremost experts but by one of their biggest fans, lends a dorky enchantment to the nest-raiding bird-decapitating little darlings.

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He has written regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News