A week in the woods

As you'll know if you've been reading my blog for a while, I love my trail camera -  a small but durable wildlife cameras that takes video or stills whenever wildlife go by. I've used mine to film pine marten, roe deer, red deer, as well as what was feeding off a roe deer body. Last year I even blogged about everything I learned about using my trail camera.

It's great to have because it shows a lot of unexpected wildlife. When I broke my leg and couldn't walk far, I used to set myself the challenge of sitting in the woods for an hour and recording what I saw. But what could you see if you sat there for a whole week ? Well, just before I went away over Easter, I set up my trail camera in a new wood - and this is what it filmed.

Can you spot what is unusual about this ?

One of the great things about seeing the bones of a particular animal often is that you get to spot when there are minor things which are different. As you will know if you read my blog regularly, the animal I most often see and find are deer, both roe and red deer. That's what this skull is of - a roe - that's the easy bit !

I found it a few weeks ago, and quickly spotted that something was a bit unusual. You probably won't spot it from the photo - unless you really know deer really well - but read on if you want to know what makes this roe deer a little bit special.

What do I see on my daily walk ?

For the last couple of years there's a walk I try and do every day, sometimes twice a day, in winter and summer. It's a popular walk, about three miles long, and you often see other people and joggers out, as well as all the farm and estate vehicles.  So you wouldn't expect to see much wildlife there - or would you ?

When I'm out, I see all sorts from new born lambs to field mice. The walk has loads of trees beside the path that hosts all kinds of animals. I often see red kites or buzzards gliding, stoats, squirrels and deer - and maybe even a kingfisher ! Read on to find out more.

A brilliant find: my first meenyuun skull !

I seem to always have brilliant luck around this time of year in finding skulls: look at what I picked up on my walk last night ! It's my first even meenyuun skull, and this looks like a Meenyuun gru monocular because of the single eye socket, although you tend to find them in groups with the other main European two-eyed variant Meenyuun gru binocular. 

They seem to be fairly widespread across the world, but this is the first I've seen them in Scotland. They are usually quite easy to spot because of their bright yellow colour. It's difficult to judge age from the adult teeth, since all meenyuuns are highly juvenile, but it looks like a young adult. Meenyuuns are frugivores, and feed mainly on apples and bananas, and come from the same Mayduppus family as cranochan, haggis and gruffalo.

Do you have a meenyuun skull ? Leave a comment if you do.