My dad's good deed that didn't end well

Normally I go on one walk a week, but because I have a broken leg at the moment, Dad has been going on walks by himself. Yesterday while I was at school dad took the day off work and planned a big walk to explore a new wood. The walk was to go up in the snowy hills on a moor near my house, and go up the side of a steep valley. The wood was on the side of the valley on a very steep slope with a river at the bottom. After exploring the wood he would find a way to cross the river and head up on the other side to a deserted farmhouse and make his way back.

He parked his car then walked up and took the main route up the hills up past the snow line. There where lots of deer out because the snow was covering up their food and they needed to spend a lot more time finding and eating food in the snowy weather. He says he saw about 50 in total. The way where he wanted to go was too dangerous because of snowdrifts, so he came down to the bottom edge of the wood and that is where the story really begins.

My African Grey Parrot skull

My village in Scotland doesn't have many parrots, so I had to buy this skull off ebay. I bought it at the end of last year but didn't get round to writing about it until now, when I can't go on walks because of my stupid broken leg.

If you are at all interested in bird skulls, parrot skulls are particularly interesting. All bird skulls show how that particular type of bird gets food, like the thin long beak of an oystercatcher, or the curved short bills of raptors, or the very specialised beaks of crossbills. Parrots have evolved over time to specialise in eating hard seeds, but they look completely different to, say, finches which also eat seeds.

The plane, the house, the mystery, and the fox cub

I'm not able to go on bone-collecting walks for at least another five weeks since I broke my leg, but this post is about the last walk I did before I broke my leg. It was on a weekday after school, and in the Haggis Woods (where we did this post last year). The Haggis Woods are a long strip of woods which slope uphill with the A9 road at the bottom of them.

I hadn't been there since last year, but I knew there would be roe deer there. Apart from that, I didn't know what we were going to find, but the end we found somewhere interesting to explore, found a mystery, and got a big shock !

I'm featured in the Telegraph magazine today

I did an interview in January for the Telegraph Magazine as part of an article on child bloggers and it's finally been published today. It is a lot like the piece I was featured in for The Times in August. I am one of five bloggers featured. You can see it here online.

Like the Times one, I have good and bad thoughts about it. It's great to be featured, but there were mistakes in the article. Most importantly I don't have a bald eagle skull (underlined for anyone involved with CITES). I do have a golden eagle skull, and I went to a LOT of effort to make sure I was allowed to keep it by law.

I don't live in Perth (which is a city, I live in Perth and Kinross, which is a county), I don't know why Professor Black was researching furcula so I don't know whether it was part of a 15 year old murder investigation - the murder thing was just what Professor Black had been doing when I did the interview, and the thing I said about Jenson Button was really about when bone experts like Professor Black visit my blog.

Jake's (broken) bones

Here's a bone I never expected to write about !

Yesterday at cross-country club after school I slipped back and fell and there was a crack and immediately my right leg felt extremely painful and I couldn't move. I was covered up with coats and the headteacher called an ambulance and dad who was off work that day came with my baby brothers.

The Bell Pettigrew Museum in St Andrews

During half-term two weeks ago me and dad went out to St Andrews to see the Bell Pettigrew Museum which is part of the university there. It is one of the best museums I have been to. I had to email in advance to ask for permission to go but there wasn't a problem and the museum was open anyway. 

It was a bit tricky to find and all the rooms round it were getting painted and had workmen in, but when we were there we spent a couple of hours there and we could have spent longer.

And my REALLY BIG NEWS is.... (updated!)

I've been hinting at this for a while, but only a few people have known up until now. Now I finally get to tell you ! And it's really really big news !