An interesting skull from a friend

The week before last, fellow bone collector Ric Morris came to my house for dinner with his wife and his daughter. They were on their way back from their holiday in the highlands and islands, where they went beach combing. Dad made made a lovely meal for all of us earlier that day.

After dinner, he told me that he had brought some skulls that he found on the beach for me. We went outside and he showed me the bones he had found. Most of them still had dried flesh, but one or two were clean. One of them was a skull - let's see if you can ID it. Here are some clues:

Woodpeckers, seals and other things I saw this week

For most of this week I've been on holiday in Skye, and I came back on Friday. This week has been great for seeing lots of wildlife. I have already written about seeing the white-tailed sea eagles but here are some of the other things I saw there and at home since I came back.

One of the most amazing things about Skye was how many stars you could see. On the second night Dad was leaving out the rubbish and then he called me out to see the sky. You could see so much because there were no clouds or streetlights and we were in the middle of nowhere. This is how it looked:

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 !

A waterfall, a watermill and a brand new wood

Around my house there are about a dozen woods that I have explored already, and this year I want to find new woods to explore. Last Saturday night Dad looked on a map and found a new wood that he thought would be good to explore. We had a good time exploring it last Sunday and found three new skulls and then on Sunday night Dad heard out about something amazing that would be worth exploring, so we went back again today. This post is about those two walks and what we found.

Half term trips: the Scottish Seabird Centre

This is the third half term trip I have written about after Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre and the National Museum of Scotland, and it is one of the most special trips of all because I was meeting Mrs Powell who is also a bone collector. We had swapped some amazing skulls before and I had asked her if I she would like two red deer skulls (one of which was this one). She said yes and offered to swap for a pig and a seal, which are amazing and  I am going to write about later. She said maybe we could meet up in person, and she lives in the north of England and I live in Scotland and when we looked on a map the Scottish Seabird Centre was  in North Berwick which is about half way between.

Seeing 21 different species in one place.

Last Saturday me and Dad went for a walk in the evening around two lochs quite near my house. Dad had gone the previous day, and seen loads of wildlife, and we went back to try another look at one of the birds he saw. This week is really about how much wildlife you can see in one walk, although I'm will write the wildlife Dad saw on his walk as well.

The lochs are called the Upper Rhynd and Lower Rhynd. They are next to one another, and water runs between the upper to the lower loch. Those two lochs, and another one nearby called Carsebreck are famous for thousands of geese coming to them over the winter from Iceland.

Here is a map of where we walked: