This year has been amazing for me and collecting my bones. It's probably been one of the best years of my life so far.
This year has been amazing for me and collecting my bones. It's probably been one of the best years of my life so far.
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This year has been amazing for me and collecting my bones. It's probably been one of the best years of my life so far.
Happy Christmas from me and my baby brother Sam !
It is still very wintery here in Scotland which makes it difficult to drive or even walk about without slipping over. If you're a deer, it's very tough. To find food you might have to search new areas, and that can mean crossing roads and getting run over.
The last ten days have been absolutely terrible with snow here in Scotland. Last winter was bad, but this one looks worse. My school was closed all last week, and on Monday my mum had to sleep at her work because she couldn't get home. Last night was -19c in my village, which I think was the coldest place in Scotland, and the night before that was -18c.
At the end of the summer, I went with Mum and Dad to the McManus museum in the middle of Dundee. I actually went there twice. The first I went because when I was at Perth Museum they said the McManus museum was really good. The second time I went was because my friend Catherine who is a archeozoologist was doing a workshop there on bones.
I've spotted lots of different birds in different places recently, and this I'm going to write about them all.
↑ This bird looks really cool, maybe a bit like a tropical bird like a parrot. I saw it looking out my hall window into the trees opposite, and there were a whole load of them in a tree. I had to go all the way through my bird book to work out they were waxwings, which come from another country in large groups to eat the berries here. They are so rare here there was even a piece in my local newspaper about them. They have a crest and a yellow tip on the tail.
↑ This bird looks really cool, maybe a bit like a tropical bird like a parrot. I saw it looking out my hall window into the trees opposite, and there were a whole load of them in a tree. I had to go all the way through my bird book to work out they were waxwings, which come from another country in large groups to eat the berries here. They are so rare here there was even a piece in my local newspaper about them. They have a crest and a yellow tip on the tail.
This is the first of a series of posts about this skeleton.
You can read the second one here.
I haven't written the third one yet !
You can read the second one here.
I haven't written the third one yet !
This week's post is about how I collected a great red deer stag skeleton. On Friday morning, dad and I went up to Suicides Graves wood to collect a skeleton which dad noticed a few weeks before. He brought the skull back to show me, but left the rest.
Last winter was very cold here with lots of snow for months. Snow is bad for deer here since the cold can kill them off, and the snow can cover up the food that they eat. After the winter was over, we found about five roe deer skeletons in the Pheasant Woods. One of them was where this skull came from:
At the start of the year I wrote a post about the five skulls I would like to find this year. One of them was a perfect sheep skull, with both horns and both jaws. I have found loads of sheep skulls before, but none with all five parts. I found a great sheep skull on Sheriffmuir, but one on the jaws and one of the horns was missing. I've found three sheep skulls which have lower jaws, but which were female or didn't have horns. And the closest I came was this skull which I called Montferno from Titus Well Moor which had both horns but only one of the jaws.
There are six types of deer that live in the wild in the UK. They are roe deer, red deer, fallow deer, sika deer, muntjac deer and Chinese water deer. The two types that live around my village are red and roe deer, and these are the only two types of deer that have always lived in Britain.
When I first started going on walks, I thought it was a bit difficult to tell which was red and roe deer, but once you know how to tell the difference, it gets really easy. This is how to tell them apart.
In June, I wrote about searching a deserted farm where I found a sheep's body that had got stuck in a fence. Because it wasn't rotted down I left it for a bit. But every time we've checked it's still the same !
Normally when a body rots the bones fall apart. This sheep's body is still all stuck together by the bits of flesh that held the bones together.
Yesterday, me, my mum, my baby brother and my dad went to the red kite centre at Argaty. I like red kites because there are a few nests near my village, but I'm not allowed to say where. In one of my favourite woods you can go and see a pair of red kites flying about and I love watching them.
At the red kite centre at Argaty, you can go and watch the red kites being fed. They only give them a tiny bit of food to make sure the red kites are finding food for themselves. The food they put out is from rabbits and deer, cut into tiny pieces. At 2.30pm we arrived and walked up to a hide, which is like a big shed with lots of flaps on every side where you can sit and watch the birds.
I'm doing an extra post this week and next because I'm on half term this week. (The schools in my area get two weeks off this time of year because the children used to help gather the potatoes in the farms.)
This is one of the skulls that Michael the bone collector sent me (together with my amazing badger skull). A badger skull and an owl skull were two of the five skulls that I said I wanted to get this year so it's cool to get them.
On Tuesday, after school, Mum, Dad, me and my baby brother Sam went on a walk for a nature diary for my school. I had picked a walk in a wood I know really well where I knew I would see tons of wildlife, like red squirrels, roe deer, red kites, buzzards, grey herons, ducks and pheasants. Mum and I went on ahead, and Dad went a different route with Sam in a papoose and said he would meet us to watch the red kites.
I finished cleaning up my fantastic fallow deer skull about a month ago but I've had tons to write about here so this is the first time I've written about it.
The fallow deer head was given to me as a present by a gamekeeper. We don't have fallow deer near my village but he shot it at his last job.
This week I got a great surprise present. My friend who is the gamekeeper in the Pheasant Woods came round on Monday to tell me that he had caught a fox and a grey squirrel for me to rot down for their bones. This was brilliant because all my fox skulls don't have the lower jaws, and none of them have all the teeth.
The problem with rotting animals down is the smell, and it takes about two or three months, and other animals can dig them up and spread the bones about. So we used the same plan that we used to rot down the hedgehog. Here is what we used:
When I had my week of being famous, another bone collector from Scotland called Michael emailed me to say hello. He has 1,000 skulls including a giraffe skull !
Michael asked if I wanted to swap skulls because he didn't have a swan skull and I had two. So I sent him my swan skull in exchange for a badger skull, a barn owl skull and he gave me a rabbit leg with the bones glued together which was great as well ! But this week I am just going to write about the badger skull.
When I'm in woods looking for bones, I find a lot of other cool stuff as well. Here are some of the things that I've found and kept.
I found this red deer skull about three months ago. I found it in a poachers pit in Suicides Graves wood.
Poachers are people who shoot deer without permission of the person who owns the land to steal the meat. Sometimes they work during the night so no-one can see them or catch them. Sometimes they shoot the deer with a gun, sometimes they use a crossbow, and sometimes they use big dogs to hunt deer.
After I had my VIP tour of Perth Museum, I went to look at the skulls on display on the main bit. Here are some of the best ones. All of these were from animals that you used to get in Scotland but don't anymore.
• Wolf skull
This one is a wolf skull. I saw real life wolves at the Scottish Deer Centre last year. You could see them quite close, but there were big high fences around them. I was there when they fed the wolves. They brought them raw meat and threw it in the enclosure. The wolves could smell the raw meat when it was being brought to them, even when it was a mile away.
• Wolf skull
This one is a wolf skull. I saw real life wolves at the Scottish Deer Centre last year. You could see them quite close, but there were big high fences around them. I was there when they fed the wolves. They brought them raw meat and threw it in the enclosure. The wolves could smell the raw meat when it was being brought to them, even when it was a mile away.
Yesterday I was in my local paper, the Perthshire Advertiser, with a story about when I got the VIP trip to Perth Museum. I only found out when I came home from school at lunchtime today and it was a nice surprise and I think I look good in the paper.
I have two unicorn skulls ! Really !
I found this skull in Titus Well wood. It was the first complete sheep skull I found. When I first saw it, it was upside down and it wasn't until I picked it up I realised it was a sheep. But it only had one horn !
I found this skull in Titus Well wood. It was the first complete sheep skull I found. When I first saw it, it was upside down and it wasn't until I picked it up I realised it was a sheep. But it only had one horn !
On Wednesday, I went to be a VIP at Perth Museum and Art Gallery. A lady at the museum called Linda Allan had seen me when I was in the newspapers and emailed me to ask if I wanted to have a VIP tour of the museum and I said yes I'd love to.
In the last couple of weeks I've got six new skulls, which is amazing, and I have a lot to write about. The skull I am going to write about this week is a roe deer buck that died in the wood behind the old Roman fort in my village.
When I was being filmed for Scottish Television, we went up to Tam Breck wood just outside my village and I noticed lots of baby frogs hopping about.
Today Dad and I made a special trip to the wood to see if we could find any baby frogs and if we could work out what they were.
Dad has finished photographing almost all my skulls, and I've put them on my blog so you can see. There are 65 of them so far, and you can see them all here or by clicking on "My skulls" at the top of every page.
This week I got some great bones in the post. They were from a nice man called Bob Erlam who read about me in the newspaper.
Last week I wrote about being in newspapers. More has happened since then so I have written about my whole week again:
This week has been a really good week because I've been on the TV, on the radio, and been in three newspapers ! This is how my week has been:
On Sunday there was a story about me in the Mail on Sunday. I'd spoken to a journalist called George a few days before, and then dad took the pictures because he used to work for newspapers. Dad woke me up early to show me the newspaper, and I thought it was a dream and went back to sleep ! Then when I woke up again, Mum showed me the newspaper again, and I was really, really happy.
This week has been a really good week because I've been on the TV, on the radio, and been in three newspapers ! This is how my week has been:
• Sunday
On Sunday there was a story about me in the Mail on Sunday. I'd spoken to a journalist called George a few days before, and then dad took the pictures because he used to work for newspapers. Dad woke me up early to show me the newspaper, and I thought it was a dream and went back to sleep ! Then when I woke up again, Mum showed me the newspaper again, and I was really, really happy.
This is the cleaned-up red deer skull that I found in Dougal's Cairn wood when I was walking with mum. It was partly buried in the ground, which is why it looked filthy and dirty when I first found it.
This year I've been spotting more and more birds on walks. Here are some of the ones that I've seen near to rivers or lochs.
The strange bird above is a grey heron. I saw that one in the loch at the university and it had a nest, but I seen others in the fields near the castle, and over by the pheasant woods. It is very big and has a long neck which it uses to get fish out of the water to eat.
Two months ago, I wrote about when Dad brought a hedgehog home that he had found on the road and thought was a bit sick. We put in in a warm box and gave it food and water but it still died.
I found this strange bone about a month ago, at the edge of Suicides Graves wood. When I first picked it up, it confused me because of the size. Then I realised it wasn't an entire skull, only half of one, and that helped me work out what it was.
On Monday, Dad went out early for a walk to photograph red deer on the Titus Well moor. As he was coming back, he took a new path through the woods, and found this skull in a ditch. It has a long bill like an oystercatcher, and that was what he thought it was.
Me and dad were out walking very early this morning to watch roe deer just beyond the Pheasant Woods. On the way back, I spotted a key and a keyring lying on a farm track and I spotted it and not dad because dad is so blind.
I have found sheep skulls before, but last weekend and this weekend I think I've found the best yet.
The one at the top was from early last Sunday morning. Dad and I were watching a herd of red deer on Titus Well moor, high above my village. We found parts of sheep skeleton, and we were really excited because we thought we had found a perfect skull, with both horns and both parts of the jaw. But we looked and looked and couldn't find the other part of the jaw ! It was disappointing, but it's cool all the same, and it's horns are the biggest I've found yet.
In December, I wrote about a red kite that was shot near my village. This week I found out that it has recovered and is going to be released back into the wild, which is brilliant.
In the last month, my dad and I have been watching a red deer herd that lives in woods about two miles from my house. This week we started to see some of this year's baby red deer.
Baby red deer are called calves. They are born about this time, and for the first week their mum hides them in the woods or in long grass. When they born they have white spots on them but the spots go away after the summer.
Today I went on a walk in woods near my house to check on a rotting roe deer and whether the bones were ready to collect yet. The deer was about three weeks away from being white bones, so dad and I took a break on the hillside in the sun.
While we were resting, we saw a big bird soaring from some trees not far away. First of all we thought it was a buzzard, but the head was light grey, not brown, and the tail was too long. It was a red kite !
Here are two red deer that I saw early yesterday morning when I was on a walk with dad in Suicides Graves wood. I haven't seen many red deer recently because when it was snowy over the winter the red deer woods were difficult to get to. But I have found three interesting red deer skulls recently, as well as finding three dead red deer.
This is a roe buck that we saw this week in the Secret Lake Wood. In the last few weeks, we've been seeing roe deer with their full antlers out.
George is the roe deer skeleton I found in February in the wood behind the Roman Fort in my village. The bones were scattered about and some were green, because they had lay there for eight months. This is what the bones looked like when we started to gather them.
On Wednesday when my dad picked me up from cubs he told that someone was coming to the house for a surprise sleep-over. I thought it was one of my friends, but when I got home it was a hedgehog !
My dad had found the hedgehog when he was driving down the back road trying to get my baby brother to sleep. It was on the road, looking sleepy, and he was worried it would get run over. When he picked it up, it didn't go into a ball, so he was worried it was ill and took it home to look after for a night.
I'm in Ireland this weekend but this picture was taken almost exactly a year ago. Me and my friend Innes found all of these bones in one day in Dougal's Cairn wood. It was one of my best bone finds ever.
We found three red deer stag skulls, two with antlers and one with the antlers sawn off, and a red deer hind skull. And we found two doe skulls, one baby roebuck, and one adult roebuck. Best of all we found my fox skeleton Harry.
I've made a special page which shows all the skeletons I've collected together. You can see it here or by clicking "My skeletons" at the top.
This is a skull I never thought I'd find on a walk. I found it a week ago while exploring a new wood, looking for a herd of roe deer.
We started to explore one corner of the wood, and worked all the way around until we camee back where we started. We had seen grey squirrels and three roe deer, and then dad found a front leg and a shoulder blade. It looked too big to be a rabbit, but too small to be a roe, so he thought it was maybe a fox. Then we searched all round that part for new bones, and we found this skull, lying upside down besides a log.
In February my dad was out walking in Fallen Tree Wood by himself. He was watching some roe deer when he saw this doe. When dad first saw it he thought it was eating something because she had something in her mouth. But then he looked through his binoculars and saw it was foam coming out of her mouth.
This is the goose skeleton we found last month in a field next to the Pheasant Woods. About a half a mile from where we found it are some lochs where geese come from other countries to stay during the winter.
Today I have a new baby brother ! He is called Samuel, and I love him very much. He was born at lunchtime, and after school Grandma and Grandad took me to the hospital to see him. I think he is cute and I am going to be a best friend to him and look after him.
This winter has been very, very snowy and cold. At the start of this month it was so snowy that my village was cut off, and there was no electricity. That means that more birds came to our birdtable to get food, and a lot of the birds were different to the birds that normally come. (I wrote about the birds I usually see here). All the birds I'm writing here were special birds that I hadn't seen before.
This is the roe deer skeleton that I found in January in the wood near Gleneagles. We found the pelvis, one entire leg, some broken ribs, and most of the spine, and we called this skeleton Charlie, because we didn't know whether it was a buck (male) or a doe (female). Normally deer skeletons are easy to work out if you have the skull, because only the male deer have antlers (unless you're a reindeer, but we don't have those in Scotland). But we didn't have Charlie's skull, so we didn't know.
Then two weeks ago I got an email from Debby, an assistant professor from America. Her daughter was about the same age as me and she had found a deer pelvis, and she wanted to know if we knew whether you could tell the difference between male and female deer pelvises. I didn't, and Daddy didn't either but we sent her pictures of the pelvises where we knew whether it was a male or female.
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