Day 268/18. A first for me: A Pine Marten

A visit in the sun to a small local wildlife park. I take a lot of nature pictures, but this is my first decent picture of a Pine Marten. Extremely shy in the wild, they are only found wild in the UK in Scotland and North Wales. This one was captive, of course.
Cute, but a vicious predator. The diet of the pine marten includes small mammals, carrion, birds, insects, and fruits.
The recovery of the population of the Pine Marten has been credited with reducing the population of invasive grey squirrels in the UK and Ireland. Where the range of the expanding Pine Marten population meets that of the grey squirrel, the population of the grey squirrels quickly retreats and the red squirrel population recovers. Because the grey squirrel spends more time on the ground than the red squirrel, which co-evolved with the Pine Marten, they are thought to be far more likely to come in contact with this predator.

Grey Squirrel vs Pine Marten, the Pine Marten wins every time.