A family of roe deer, and some new bones

Today me and my dad went on a walk to a wood near Gleneagles, just a few miles from my house. We'd been there before twice, and knew there were roe deer there. We crept into the wood quietly and went round the edges of a clearing. As we went down a dry stream bed, we saw a roe deer watching us. We stopped and hid and saw that there were were three roe deer, a buck, a doe and a fawn.

Strange bones #5

This is a bone I found on a walk last week in the Pheasant Woods. It's a very unusual bone. I have found two like it before, and it took a while to work out what they were.

The first time I found this type of bone was on a walk near the geese lakes. In a small wood, I found it next to some other bones, and I kept it because it was unusual. It was in a loop like a small horseshoe that was bent, and the ends had points.

Watching roe deer in the snow

It has been cold this winter, but I've still been going on loads of walks. The walks have all been in the Pheasant Woods to try and watch the roe deer that live there.

Winter is tough for deer. All the water they usually drink is frozen, even the big lochs in the Pheasant Woods. The grasses and plants they normally eat are buried under snow. This means they have to try harder to find food and explore new areas.

A lucky meeting with a red squirrel

Tuesday was my first day back at school. Because it has been really really snowy in my village, my dad didn't go into his office but went on a walk instead to watch the roe deer. When he was watching the deer he turned around and saw a red squirrel in the tree and was lucky to get a picture of it.

Winter birds

It's been a great Christmas but very snowy, so it's difficult to see many bones because there is the ground is all covered in lots of snow. Even though its been snowy and cold I've been on lots of walks and seen lots of wildlife, especially birds, so this week I'm just going to write about birds.

Because its been so snowy, the easiest wood to walk in is the Pheasant Wood, on the other side of the river to my village. There are actually lots of pheasant woods around where I live. During the year the gamekeepers look after the pheasants, then in winter people pay to shoot them. Here's a male pheasant on the left with a female pheasant on the right. They have very long tails. I have a pheasant skull in my collection.



Pheasants are quite fat, an they don't like to fly very much, so they just walk around on the ground. Here are what their footprints look like in the snow.