TEN years ago I spent a summer evening in a glassed-in hide on the Rothiemurchus estate near Aviemore. The attraction was the possibility of watching pine martens, lured to food placed on an adjacent bird table.

A long wait for the light to fade was eventually rewarded by a visit from both a male and female marten, the pair briefly intertwining as they met on the pole to the feeding platform, a rarely seen encounter for these usually solitary animals.

Our guide, who had worked for Speyside Wildlife for a year, lived in a nearby cottage and I asked him if he had ever seen a wildcat. One had apparently been seen from the hide two years previously but, although he had seen one in the Picos de Europa in northern Spain, he had never seen one in Scotland.

He reckoned they were still being shot by gamekeepers who could avoid prosecution if caught if the wildcat was shown to contain DNA from interbreeding with feral domestic cats.

I reconciled myself to never seeing a Scottish wildcat so a big highlight on a recent trip to northern Greece was when, on a track running along the edge of Lake Kerkini, a wildcat emerged and sauntered along some way ahead of our vehicle, before looking back and then vanishing into the undergrowth.

We waited and ten minutes later it emerged again, aware of our presence but not overly bothered. It was like a big tabby cat but had the characteristic thick, heavily banded tail with a black tip (pictured).

I had seen African wildcats previously, in Ethiopia and South Africa but they are a different species with our domestic cats descended from the African species initially tamed by the ancient Egyptians.

Wildcats were once found throughout mainland Britain but were gradually wiped out by centuries of persecution. The surviving population, in northwest Scotland, is estimated to be between 115 and 314 individuals.

Saving Wildcats is a conservation partnership that may have come just in time to save the Scottish wildcat from extinction. It has set up a captive breeding programme and is currently celebrating its first breeding season, with 22 wildcat kittens from just six litters, which will be released into the wild, after time spent in pre-release enclosures to prepare them for life in the wild.

European wildcats are said to be virtually impossible to tame, an attractive trait in a truly wild animal.

www.wharfedale-nats.org.uk