My amazing golden eagle skull

Since last week I have been hinting about this skull, and now I can finally say what it is. It is a golden eagle skull !

If you haven't read the other two stories before this, I was sent an amazing biscuit tin of bones as a surprise by some I had never met before who worked as a deer stalker in the Highlands of Scotland. He told me he had collected these skulls over his life, and now he was retired and when he died his family were just going to throw them away. He read about me in the newspaper and sent the tin to my village without even a house or street name, but still the postman found the house.

You might think a ten year old boy shouldn't be allowed to have such a precious and rare skull as this, but I have spent six weeks, about 30 emails and phone calls, and contacting two government deartments to make sure I can keep it. From the very first moment I first got it, I told some expert friends, and they gave me very good advice. I checked the law (which is confusing), then got in touch with Scottish Natural Heritage who looked at all the information  I had, and how the bird died, then decided I was allowed to keep it. Then dad phoned DEFRA who said I didn't need any more licences or permissions from them. I have done loads and loads and loads of checking with experts, and I am definitely allowed to keep it. I wrote about all that did in a post yesterday. But here's more about this amazing skull.

The law and my amazing mystery skull

I promised that I was going to write this weekend about the extra skull that came in the biscuit tin of bones, and I am still going to but I'm going to write about it tomorrow. First of all I am going to write about what I had to do to work out whether I could keep it.

I'm not going to tell you yet what it is but as soon as I saw it I knew it could have only come from one of two animals and both of them are very rare and special indeed. I was very excited when I saw it, but I was worried that I wouldn't be allowed to keep it. I had to do lots of work to find out whether I could.

The surprise biscuit tin of bones

About a month ago I got a surprise card from the postman to say that he had tried to deliver a parcel to me. I had no idea who it came from, but it was an amazing surprise that showed how kind some people are. There are lots of reasons why this has taken me a month to write this, and one of them is very important and I will write about it more next week. But this week is exciting enough !

My pile of spare bones in the kitchen

Whenever I come back from a walk, the first room I come into is the kitchen, and this is where the small bones that I bring back end up. The pile grows and grows and grows until Mum goes off on one and I have to tidy them up. At the moment the pile is quite big, so as it's my school holidays at the moment, I went through them to see what I could find. Here is what is there at the moment:

Exploring the deserted castle

Last weekend, I went to explore a derelict castle which is a few miles from my house. Dad had read about it on one of the historic building registers, but it is well hidden, and we had to get permission to visit it. 

It was an amazing find because it is absolutely massive with loads of rooms, towers, servants quarters and even a chapel.

From the outside it looks amazing, just like you would expect a castle to look like. It almost looks lived in. This is how it looks from the north west corner.

Can you guess how I did it ?

Did you fall for my post on Sunday ? I left in lots of clues like the Maydupp (MADE UP) Forest, the Knotreall (NOT REAL) Estate and the Phaycce (FAKE) Woods. There are also no unicorns in Scotland, the fallen trees were due to the storms in November, the tree markings were from a woodpecker, and the footprints I just made up. And haggis are not toilet trained and they don't eat french pancakes ! The video was good fun to make.

My haggis skull, and how to track wild haggis (video)

This is a skull I am very excited about and I have been saving it for ages to write about today !

This is one of the animals most associated with Scotland, like red deer and golden eagles. Haggis are rare and most Scots still only see them once a year, usually towards the end of January. This haggis skull was a tremendous find, as it has the lower jaws and canines. I found it near my village in woods on the Maydupp estate.