All good things...

I've been blogging now at least once a week for six years and seven months, and this is my 416th blog post here. It's been an exhausting, brilliant and amazing journey, but I've made the very difficult decision that it's time to take a break from blogging for a while.

I began blogging when I was seven because I wanted to share more about the bones I found and the places I explored around my village. When I wrote my very first blog post, which only a couple of people read at the time, I never imagined that I would create something read by thousands of people every week.

 I never ever imagined that it would lead to me appearing on television and in newspapers, that Chris Packham, CBBC Newsround and CBBC Wild would come to my house to film, that I would end up appearing on Autumnwatch and Winterwatch, that I would appear on BBC Breakfast, or spend two hours on BBC Radio Four, or even appear on the BBC alongside Sir David Attenborough. And the most amazing thing of all, though, is definitely my book.

Goodbye 2015, hello 2016

At the end of each year, since the start of my blog, I have written a post on New Year's Eve, looking back on the year. At the end of last year, I said that this year would not have been as good as last.-  it's not every year that your first book comes out, you get to present a copy to the Royal Family, and then do live TV on the BBC with Sir David Attenborough - but this year has had its good moments.

I always enjoy writing these posts, because it reminds me of the best parts of the year, and there was quite a lot this year ! This is what I have learned...

Happy Christmas !

Happy Christmas ! I'm spending time with my family and having a great time. Sadly, it's not snowing over here, and we only had about two or three snow days in Scotland so far - I hope we get more, because it's really beautiful near my house when it snows. (Apart from a few winters ago when it got so cold it was -18c one night)

Here's a quick fun fact for Christmas. Rudolph, Santa's reindeer was actually most likely to have been a girl. How do I know this ? It's to do with the timing of when antlers fall off and regrow each year. Both male and female reindeer have antlers (which is unusual for deer - normally it's just males). Anyway, male reindeer's antlers usually fall off before Christmas time, whereas the female's antlers do not, making Rudolph more likely to be a girl (*) !

(*) Scientists tend to try and be very exact about the timings of antlers, but I've found it varies a LOT with roe deer - it depends on age, diet, health and region. I've seen roe deer still in velvet in May, and other roe deer close by with hard antlers by March. Here's my guide anyway.

Where are all the woods going?

Here's the thing: my woods are vanishing.

The badger wood ? Gone. Mortuary wood, where I left the badger to decompose ? Gone - and it was small, but an hour spent there showed it was rich with wildlife. Parts of the Pheasant Woods where I began bone collecting ? Gone. More recently, a wood near the pine marten wood was cut down. A big part of Titus Well wood was cut down for a major power line. The wood where I filmed the roe deer carcass was cut down earlier this year. And a wood just beside the main road north past my village has been cut down.

So why is it happening ? To find out, we need to go back in the past. After WWII, most of the timber was used in the war effort, and to replenish the stock, there were tax incentives to plant thousands of trees were planted in the 1960s and 70s. These trees take about 40 or 50 years to grow, so are now coming to maturity. The problem is, the tax breaks stopped in the 1990s, so there aren't enough plantations to replace those being cut down.

A win and a loss

Two quick bits of news: firstly thank you to everyone who voted for me in the Cairngorms Nature Wildlife Presenter competition, and  a big congratulations to James Miller from Surrey who was the eventual winner. I'm pretty sad not to have won, but as runner up I do get some great prizes, like a trail camera, a signed book by Iolo Willliams and a day watching wildlife in the Cairngorms. I also really enjoyed making the video, and I'll try to make some more in 2016.

Secondly, last week The Courier ranked me at #24 in their Impact power list of people in this area of Scotland who were most influential in 2015, which was very kind of them and a very nice surprise (I didn't know in advance) although quite why I'm ranked nine places higher than Professor Sue Black at CAHID (which I visited in 2011) I don't know !

Talking of CAHID there's also a great article on the BBC website about their forensic bone identification here.

I need just a few seconds of your time....

I need your help ! Can you spare a few minutes to help me out ?

A few weeks I encouraged young naturalists to enter the Cairngorms Nature Young Presenter competition. I entered a video myself, talking about discovering the wildlife near my house - and now I've been shortlisted in the final ten.  Now there is a public vote to find the winner !

What I'd really like you to do....is go to this page and scroll to the bottom where the final ten videos are listed. If you think mine is the best (and I hope you do !) is to click on "Vote" next to my thumbnail. You'll be asked to login to your Facebook account (to make sure more than one person doesn't vote) and then your vote will be added. I really, really hope you can spare a few minutes to help me out - it means a lot to me ! Thanks again !

Cairngorms Nature Young Presenter Competition

There is a great competition for young naturalists - and time is running out to enter !

There are two National Parks in Scotland. One of them is the Cairngorms National Park. It is located in some of the most beautiful , and is over 4,500 km² in size. Iolo Williams is a Welsh naturalist and TV presenter. He has done quite a lot of work on the BBC Autumnwatch/Winterwatch (which I was on here) and he has teamed up with the Cairngorms and the RSPB  to run a competition for young naturalists. All you have to do to enter is film a short clip.

Goodbye 2014, hello 2015 !

At the end of each year I have been blogging I have written a post about how the year went, things I have learned or what I am looking forward to for the next year. It's good to take some time out to look at the year, see what I have achieved and sometimes what I would have done differently.

It's also interesting looking back at these, because never in my wildest dreams would I have expected a year like 2013, in which I have achieved far more than I could have imagined. Read on to see what lessons I have learned this year !

Happy Christmas everyone !

Happy Christmas ! There is not much snow here at the moment but there is some forecast for later today. This pic was taken at a hidden pond in the Pheasant Woods when we had snow a few weeks ago.

I am hoping to get archery lessons next year, so that will be my main present. I'm hoping to get out on walks a bit, and do some more exploring, and to check my trail camera (I got footage of a goldcrest yesterday). I hope you all have a nice Christmas and you get what you want ! I'll post again on New Year's Eve with my round-up of my year.

PS. This is also my 350th blog post ! That's pretty amazing. Here's to the next 350 !

17 great Christmas gifts for bone collectors

This week I have been writing my Christmas list, which got me thinking about what presents would be a good choice for anyone who likes nature, especially people my age. 

There are loads of great gifts out but I have picked my top 17 (for all ages). They go from stocking fillers for a couple of pounds to great experiences for hundreds of pounds, but all of them are pretty amazing and would definitely put a smile on someone's face !

My guest post on Cathy Cassidy's blog

When I was giving a talk in Bath two weeks ago for the Bath Children's Literature Festival  I met the author Cathy Cassidy who was giving a talk at the same time as me. Mrs Cassidy is the author of 25 pretty amazing books mainly for young teenage readers.

She asked me if I'd like to do a guest post on her website about becoming a published author at a young age, and I was really happy to say yes. You can find it here on "Cathy Cassidy: Dreamcatcher"

The 150 year old mystery buried in the ground

After  being on Winterwatch last week, I have got a lot more followers on Facebook and Twitter. You are probably expecting me to write about bones, but instead I am going to write about something else very odd which happened as soon as I came back home from the filming.

I brought up my trail cam up to Winterwatch in case I needed a prop when I was talking about filming the pine marten. When I came back, the first thing I did was leave my trail cam back to the area where I have been tracking it trying to find out where it lives. After I set it up, I searched around looking for fresh droppings or other signs, and then I noticed something VERY peculiar underneath the roots of a up-turned tree. I've found weird stuff in the roots of fallen down trees before, like an unexploded world war II bomb or an old cow bone, so it was definitely worth a look !

Winterwatch, and seven other cool things happening !

Right, I am going to write about the REALLY big news first: you can see me live on BBC2 TV at 9pm on Wednesday night when I will be on Winterwatch Unsprung (straight after the main Winterwatch programme) ! I've been asked to talk about some of my skeletons and bones, I will be meeting Nick Baker (who is the Unsprung presenter and a really good wildlife expert), Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan and Martin Hughes-Games (who are the main presenters, but on they will be on Unsprung too).

If you are not from the UK, BBC Winterwatch/Springwatch/Autunmwatch (which I have been on before) is one of the biggest wildlife TV programmes in the UK. It goes out live from a wildlife reserve in the UK, and this year it is from Mar Lodge in the Cairngorms, which are few hours drive from me. It's on every night this week from Monday to Thursday on BBC2  It will be an amazing experience and I am hoping to write a post to behind the scenes on Thursday ! 

Here are some of the other amazing things that I am looking forward to right now:

The heron that wasn't, and other weird stuff

I originally planned to have this post to be a fun post between Christmas and New Year but I never got round to it. I've been collecting bones for about six years now and in that time I have answered thousands of emails and messages, and been on hundreds of bone-collecting walks.

Most of the time it's interesting, but now and again I get a really funny story. So I've never told any of these stories before (apart from one I said in an interview recently). So because this week has been so busy (can't say why yet !) I'm going write about some of the funny stuff that has happened to me.

15 things I've learned in 2013

It is a real pleasure writing this blog and replying to the hundreds of people who email me. I reckon I must have spent about six or seven hours every week either exploring, walking, finding and preparing bones, and writing posts, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.

At the end of every year that I have written on this blog I do a review of the year, so this one is my fifth one. This year has been tough at times but also fun.  Here are the fifteen things I have learned this year:

Happy Christmas everyone !

Happy Christmas everyone ! I don't think we'll get snow like this here in Scotland (this was from earlier in the year) but I hope you all have a lovely Christmas with friends and family and get everything you ask for.

I'll do my final blog post of the year in a week's time, when I'll do a roundup of what 2013 has meant to me.

Five cool things I've found on walks

I usually write here about the bones I find, but sometimes I also find other interesting things that I bring back home. I've written before about finding old poison bottles, shell cases, feathers and shells, and recently I've found more cool stuff.

The first one is a bit of a puzzle. I know what it is, what animal it is from, but I can't work out how it got there, so I need your help to figure it out !

Look at my amazing room now !

This is just a short mid-week post to say that over the last week my bedroom has been completely redesigned around my bones ! It has always had tons of bones in it, but I was getting so many that I had to find new places to put them on display. The bones were already over 14 shelves and four walls, and I needed a way to show them off while having space to put the rest of my stuff away.

I've written about my room before in October 2011 when I got my 100th skull on display (read that here). This next picture is is what my room used to look like back then:

Why mums are brilliant

On Friday my dad went out to see if the roe deer had had their babies yet. He walked quietly around the edge of Quoiggs wood, staying clear of the bracken because roe mothers keep their babies hidden in long grass or foliage for the first few weeks, until they are strong enough to stay with their families and run from predators.

He had seen a few deer when he heard a doe ( a female roe) startle in the wood, and start barking. Deer usually bark to alert the rest of the herd to run away from danger, and this doe moved away a bit. Dad thought the wood would be clear now so he walked in and watched for birds. Then something strange happened.

Seven things that Zygoma taught me about blogging

Today is the 200th "Friday Mystery Object" on the Zygoma blog, written by Paolo Viscardi. Paolo works as a natural history curator at the Horniman museum in London,and he began blogging about the same time as I did (he began in April 2009 and I began in July 2009) and every week since then he has been mainly posting about objects from his museum (mostly bones and skulls) and asking people to identify them. He's been posting every week, but after this week he's going to slow down and post less often.

Paolo first helped me when I posted about finding an unusually shaped red deer antler in August 2009, and since then I've been following his blog every week. I think doing 200 Friday Mystery Objects is a big achievement, and because I can't do a surprise party, I'm going to do this post instead about what I've learned from his blog.