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:

• The loose bones

First of all there is a tub full of bigger animal bones:

1. Middle part of a skull that I found in the new wood I explored in January. Not sure what it is yet.
2. A very small sheep horn that I found in the village
3. A furcula from a small or medium sized bird.
4. A squirrel skull found in the same wood as number 1.
5. A fox upper canine
6. A jaw from a very old roe deer
7. Hips from either a small cow or big sheep that I found last weekend in a deserted farm.
8. A jaw from a young red deer, maybe six months old.
9. A humerus off a big bird, maybe a heron, that I found while shooting the haggis video
10. A humerus off a much smaller bird
11. A metacarpal (lower front leg bone) that I found just outside the village that I thought was from a cow but is probably just from a red deer.

There are some more bones in a smaller tub

12. Pliers and a toothbrush that I use to clean bones
13. Another roe deer jaw
14. A roe deer sternum (like this one)
15. Another squirrel
16. Bird leg bones and a furcula
17. A rabbit foot bones
18. A tooth from a deer or sheep
19. An owl pellet
20. A feather, maybe from a buzzard
21. Beetle casings from the site where the red deer and baby died.

The tile you can see in the main picture is one that I found and liked from a ruined cottage in Quoiggs Wood.

• The smaller box

Dad and I use these boxes to carry in our rucksacks to store delicate bones we find. This one is mine. It had in the claws, furcula, skull and lower jaws from a buzzard skeleton I found on this walk last year.

• The bigger bone box

This is dad's bone box which he lent me a few weeks ago. I was exploring a new wood and on the way  back I found a dead fox by a fence:

 I collected the skull, lower jaws, and most of the teeth but not the upper canines:

• The small tub

Here are two owl pellets that I collected from this site but never got round to looking at. (That was over a year ago !)

• The bird skulls

Finally, there were two bird heads. The first one was from one I left in a flower pot last year. I think it was off a sparrow that my friend Holly's pussycat killed.

The other one I found at Holly's house during a barbecue.  It was in good condition with lower laws aand beak sheats. I'm not sure what it's off yet.

Now I have to go and tidy these up before mum goes mad !

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