Pine Marten Chews Hole in Scottish Thatched Roof — SkimNews
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- Pam Aitchison's thatched roundhouse in a glen south of the Cairngorms has a roughly 10-inch hole chewed by a pine marten — she had previously fed it peanut butter and jam sandwiches, then stopped after worrying it was damaging the roof
- Tom Allan, a thatcher with 14 years' experience, calls the pine-marten damage a first for him; squirrels, rats and jackdaws are the familiar culprits on thatched roofs
- A neighbor named Bruce, a semi-retired plumber, hosted nesting pine martens in his garage roof for several summers and eventually chose coexistence: "They'll squeeze through anything," he said
- The replacement thatch uses Tayside water reed harvested from Britain's largest continuous reedbed — an 11-mile arc of Phragmites planted in the early 19th century and now managed by the RSPB
- That reedbed, originally built as a flood-defence scheme, holds a quarter of Britain's bearded tits along with marsh harriers and water rails, and unlike most UK thatching reed — which is imported — was sourced "just down the road"
- Allan hopes his tightly packed new thatch will be "less inviting to the mustelids" than the soft surface of the older reed
Why it matters: Thatched-roof repair in the Cairngorms is bumping into a wildlife coexistence question normally associated with attics and lofts: pine martens, protected and spreading in Scotland, are now capable of damaging traditional craft roofing. The piece also ties thatching to conservation — the locally sourced Tayside reedbed, managed by the RSPB, supplies a craft material that doubles as habitat for bearded tits and marsh harriers.
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