Happy Halloween !

Happy Halloween ! This year instead of a scary face or skull I did the Death Star, because Star Wars is cool.

Half term trips: the Scottish Seabird Centre

This is the third half term trip I have written about after Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre and the National Museum of Scotland, and it is one of the most special trips of all because I was meeting Mrs Powell who is also a bone collector. We had swapped some amazing skulls before and I had asked her if I she would like two red deer skulls (one of which was this one). She said yes and offered to swap for a pig and a seal, which are amazing and  I am going to write about later. She said maybe we could meet up in person, and she lives in the north of England and I live in Scotland and when we looked on a map the Scottish Seabird Centre was  in North Berwick which is about half way between.

Half term trips: The National Museum of Scotland

Last week me mum, dad, Harry and Sam all went to the new National Museum of Scotland which is in Edinburgh. It isn't really a new museum but they closed it for years to move things about. It reopened about two months ago and now it's even better.

The picture above is of the big natural history gallery. They have moved all the animals around and mixed them all up. Here are some of the things that I saw when I visited.

I now have 100 skulls in my room !

This is an extra long post but I think you will like it. This week I reorganized all the bones in my room and got an amazing surprise. Dad added even more shelves so I could put even more skulls out.  This next picture is what my room looks like if you take a photo all around (click for a bigger one)

Half term trips: Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre

Last week and next week were half term for me. In Perth and Kinross you get two weeks off in the autumn half term because Perthshire has a lot of farms and in olden days before there was X Factor the children were needed on the farms at this time to dig up potatoes. So this week and next week I have been doing lots of trips with my family that I am going to write about later. 

On Monday I went to the Scottish Seabird Centre to meet another amazing bone collector called Mrs Powell, and on Wednesday I went to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and I am going to write about those later. Today I am going to write about a trip that we did today to Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre. (I wrote one of my very first blog posts about a trip to Auchingarrich but somehow most of it got deleted)

Auchingarrich is a really good wildlife centre near my house, past some of the red deer woods that I walk in. It is like a big farm with a soft play and loads of animals. Here are some of the animals that I thought were interesting today.

My six-banded armadillo skull (Updated)

UPDATED: It is a six banded armadillo, not a nine-banded one which is what I originally wrote !

Earlier this year I got a surprise parcel from someone who read my blog called Ben Williams. It was full of amazing skulls from other countries and I wrote about it in four posts here, here, here and here. After I got the parcel he sent me one more surprise skull which he got from one of his friends. It's a really interesting skull that I wouldn't have found myself. It is an armadillo skull. There are twenty types of armadillo, and this one is a nine-banded six banded armadillo because it has a long snout. This type of armadillo comes from North, South and Central America South America and they are so many of them they can be considered a pest.

My five pointer red deer skull

Three months ago Dad and I were walking in Titus Well wood, and we explored a spot where the gamekeeper throws away deer heads and lower legs. It is a steep slope in a pine forest sloping down from a forest track, and it has been a good place to find lots of red deer skulls including my spiker skull. Three of my stag skulls on my shed came from this spot.

This skull was difficult to spot because it had got caught on the bottom of a pine tree at the top of the slope. When I found it it still has some skin and flesh on it and goo in the braincase..