How to tell red and roe deer apart

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.

The sheep skeleton that won't rot

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.

The red kites at Argaty

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.

My barn owl skull

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.

Helping to save a buzzard's life

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.

How I cleaned up my fallow deer skull

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.