An elusive and rare mammal described as being notoriously “hard to spot” is believed to have been caught on camera in Suffolk for the first time.<\/p>\n
The sighting of what wildlife experts believe to be a pine marten – cat-sized animals related to weasels and stoats \u2013 came at the Benacre National Nature Reserve.<\/p>\n
It was captured on a camera trap installed to monitor predators and disturbance affecting rare beach-nesting birds at the beach, which is south of Lowestoft.<\/p>\n
Adam Burrows, senior reserve manager for Natural England, said it was a “fantastic find” and a “real thrill” for everyone who worked there.<\/p>\n
“Pine martens are primarily nocturnal and hard to spot, but their light bib and bushy tail help set them apart from other mustelids,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Seeing what we think is a pine marten in Suffolk for the first time shows just how special this landscape is.”<\/p>\n
The last recorded sighting close to Benacre National Nature Reserve was made at Heacham, Norfolk, in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An elusive and rare mammal described as being notoriously “hard to spot” is believed to have been caught…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-795750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}