We have what I suspect to be a pine/stone martin living beneath our roof tiles and above our ceiling boards in the insulation. It is active at night and occasionally in the early morning. In order to encourage ‘it’ to move on I have read that people have had some success with electronic mouse deterrents and moth balls. I also understand that these creatures are protected. Any further suggestions would be welcome.
Hello Terry, you have my sympathy. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your view point) the moth balls that worked are naphthalene and they are no longer legal/available. I used them when we first came here in our loft and in fact am quite glad they have now been banned. Not much help, I’m sorry.
Are you sure it is something as large as a pine/stone martin? Mice / rats / birds can be noisy at night. In the end we’ve learnt to live with noises in the loft - but then we’re right in the country and wildlife is always around and can’t be kept out.
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We have pitter patter but amplified (sounds like mice with clogs on) … and we think it is mice and not pine/stone martin. I have invested in a few ultrasonic devices that plug in and they do seem to have reduced the amount of activity. My job in the Autumn will be filling all the gaps at the top of the walls where the roof beams rest on the stone work. We currently have chicken wire in the big gaps but I will be spending some time with smaller stones and some lime mortar to try and make it less enticing.
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And the mice’s job in the Winter will be creating new gaps.
And they will succeed…
And by the way, mice can get through the holes in standard chicken wire 
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We heard those telling steps in our attic recently - we put a trap up there and after just 10 minutes we heard it fire - no more noises since.
We use these traps, incredibly effective Link
We’d the same problem a few years ago Terry and I bought one of these and it worked a treat. Last year we had little furry things moving around the cave so we got another and it routed them too. It’s nice and humane, it doesn’t hurt them it just gives them a headache from the noise and the bright flashes mean their night vision doesn’t work. The soon give up and bugger off (into the neighbours). 
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When we re roofed, I fixed rodent mesh to every opening and air vent for the eves. So far very successful at that end of the building. We used to hear the 5ft snake moving around in the roof space at the other end and that kept most critters at bay.
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Yes, I should do that in the cave,
We had ultrasonic devices in the loft and they worked well for the mice but not for the stone martens. The ones that claim to deter both big and small mammals quite clearly won’t work because they respond to different frequencies (I could bore you stupid with our testing of home-made devices in the neighbourhood in the UK finding one that would stop the local dogs fouling the front garden).
In the end, the only thing that worked for the stone martens was putting chicken wire and the like under the eaves at the end of the house where they could climb in.
I know it will be an on going battle - currently the chicken wire is all rolled and crushed up so its got very small gaps. I am hoping the stone/mortar at the top will deter more successfully.
No loft space so can’t get anything electronic in the loft, just use them plugged in around the house and in the upstairs bedrooms.
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Good luck, Peter!
Please let us know if you succeed and which methods were most effective
My rodents prefer a subterranean entrance.
My house is built without ‘proper’ (in the UK sense) foundations and the mice simply dig under the walls and squeeze through tiny gaps. I’ve tried filling in obvious gaps with lime mortar (they ate through it) or concrete (they made another passage alongside) and don’t really know what else to do…
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Mix ground glass in with the cement or if it isn’t really big holes use plaster of Paris instead of cement first capping of with cement.
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Evening Sue, I am pretty certain it is something larger than mice or rats and definitely not birds. It really clumps about like a cat with hobnails on…
Cheers Peter and good luck with the stone work…
Thanks Matt but whatever it is it is bigger than a mouse…
Thank you John I have looked at something similar and i suspect it’s the route we will go down.
Thanks Angela. My only concern is that I have discovered what i believe to be their point of entry/exit and if I block it do i potentially trap them in and cause them to dig their way out via our ceiling?
They are nervous animals - if you make a great deal of noise in the process and do it in the middle of the day, you should be fine I would have thought. We found that the wall arches we installed along the back of the house made a perfect access point for a short jump to the eaves 
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I must admit that when I respond to their square bashing with banging on the ceiling beneath where I think they are they do stop, so more noise during the day on the ceiling may be the answer i will let you know how i get on, thank you.
I think they generally nip out during the day - or at least they seemed to here! After the wire gor stuffed in the gaps, we had no further problems - well not from thenm at any rate - the mice are back!
Alternatively, according to my elderly neighbour when we moved in here, you could do what the formidable old lady who lived here did. She turned up one day at the neighbour’s front door clutching (I think) an axe and a severed animal head and said “What’s this animal I just killed?”
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