An Interesting Scat!

Whilst walking along a very remote section of forest track at the weekend I came across an interesting scat. This was situated in the middle of a wide chalk forest track, and was centred around a raised rock. The scat was made up of a matrix of fur and fruit remains, with bramble seeds present. The fur is likely to have been a mixture of rabbit and perhaps a small rodent like a vole. The scat was relatively narrow and not particularly large. In most situations you would probably just think Red Fox but up in this area there are relic populations of Pine Martens around. There is considerable overlap at times between the appearance of scats of these two species and without DNA it is probably impossible to split a percentage of droppings. Even within each species scats can vary significantly depending on factors like diet. I will probably never know what produced this scat, but its worthy of some extra investigation work in the future. 

Whilst I am not saying its definitely not a fox, its location in the middle of a forest track is typical Pine Marten, as is the size and structure of the scat. I might have to take a further look and maybe send some off for analysis (if anybody analyses these?).