The red kite that was mobbed by a crow

This is a very quick post about something amazing that I saw out walking on Sunday. Dad and I were stalking roe deer in Quoiggs wood. We had already seen loads of them when I heard a bird sound like a high-pitched eek, more high pitched than a buzzard.  Then a red kite came down into a small clearing, tried to land on a tree, changing its mind then flew off. Then we saw it was being chased by a crow !

Watching seabirds in the Forth

Last weekend, Dad said I was going to have a surprise on Sunday morning. We got up early, and he told me to dress warm even though it was supposed to be warm anyway. We left the house at 7am, and I didn't know where I was going. He drove almost all the way to Edinburgh and parked right inbetween the Forth bridges. Then he told me that we were going on a seabird boat cruise that was part of the RSPB Scottish Birdfair !

The ancient horse jaw

Near the end of last year I went on a walk up to The Pheasant Woods which are on the other side of the river to the village. The Pheasant Woods are a collection of six or seven small woods and four lakes which used to be part of a big country estate. The country house was knocked down years ago but the ice houses and some other buildings are still there. It's a great place to find bones and watch roe deer and buzzards but I've explored it so much I don't often go there any more.

This time I went up in the afternoon and I was walking around and then I found this on the ground. It was very well camouflaged that I thought it was a big bit of tree bark. When I picked it up I realised it was a big jaw and I thought it was off a cow. I spent about two hours searching for the rest of the skull and skeleton but never found them.

Stalking deer in the Gleneagles Wood

I try and do one big walk a week with dad, usually at the weekend. There is always a kind of plan. Sometimes it is to watch deer, sometimes it is to explore new woods or deserted buildings, and sometimes to look for bones. Sometimes it is a bit of all three. This is about a walk I did two weeks ago where we went to watch roe deer.

The wood I chose was one I call the Gleneagles Wood because it is close to the Gleneagles Hotel. It is set on a heather moor, and is mostly dense pine trees with two big clearings. I have been here a lot. I first wrote about it here in January 2010, and the last time I wrote about it was last November. But this time was a bit special because I discovered something new !

Meeting a golden eagle for real

This weekend I have been away camping with cubs (my last cub camp because I'm moving up to Scouts !) so I'm going to write about something that happened just over a week ago. It was Take Your Child to Work day, and so I had been working with dad who is a photographer that morning, but in the afternoon he had arranged something special.

A few weeks before he had been at a big corporate event where there were falconers and lots of wild birds, including owls and a golden eagle ! He explained to the falconer that I had been sent a golden eagle skull, but I had never seen one for real, and the falconer at Elite Falconry said I could come up and see their two golden eagles !