My spiker red deer skulls (part 1)

For the last couple of weeks I have been cleaning up this skull for a friend who is a bone collector in England. It is a young red deer stag skull, and I first found it in April at a gamekeepers pit in a red deer wood that I walk in.

It is interesting because the antlers are just spikes, the longest  about 15cm long,without any branches or tines. Deer that have antlers like this are called 'spikers', 'spikes' or sometimes 'prickets' . The left antler is shorter because it has been broken.

This is what the skull looked like when I first found it:

Lots of new birds I've seen this year

Two weekends ago, me and Dad were up early to go and explore a new deer wood. As we were about to leave, we looked out the window at the bird table, and saw this bird !

Because it has a red cap at the front it looks like a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. But because the underside of the tail is red, that mean's it's a Great Spotted Woodpecker. The red cap at the front (rather than the back) is because it's a juvenile.

Here are some more new birds I have seen.

The cow skull I bought on eBay

I have been selling some of my extra skulls on eBay recently. The ones I have been selling have been roe deer, red deer and sheep. With the money I have earned I have bought more skulls that I didn't have before, and I have been looking through eBay to see if there are any interesting new skulls to buy.

One evening I was looking through all the skulls on eBay and I found a cow skull ! It was the first cow skull I'd seen on eBay and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to bid on it.

Exploring the ruined mansion

There are tons of old empty buildings where I live. Some of them haven't been empty for long, and still have the roofs on. Some have been empty for hundreds of years and have mostly fallen down. I've been exploring old buildings for as long as I have been collecting bones.

In March, Dad and I spotted an old building in a wood that we hadn't explored before. We looked at satellite photographs and it looked as if it was derelict. One afternoon, in the middle of a snowstorm, we went up to explore. We found a massive deserted mansion that had fallen down. This is what it looked like:

Strange roe deer antlers

I have been really lucky with finding roe deer buck skulls and antlers so far this year, especially when I have been exploring new woods. I have written before about how roe deer antlers grow, but this week I am going to write about roe deer antlers that haven't grown properly.