Learning how to handle a Harris Hawk

Monday was the last day of my summer holidays, and I had decided to spend it using up one of my Christmas presents which was a voucher for a falconry lesson at Phoenix Falconry which is a few miles up the road to me, near Gleneagles Hotel and next to one of the woods I do a lot of exploring for bones.

I've seen lots of big raptors (birds of prey) before, either in the wild (like buzzards, kestrels, red kites or ospreys), or at bird centres or trips (like golden eagles, white-tailed sea eagles or red kites) but on Monday I got to handle a new type of bird, an American Harris Hawk !

Seeing white-tailed sea eagles on the Isle of Skye

This week I've been on holiday in the Isle of Skye. Skye is an island to the north west of Scotland and it's about 55 miles tall and about 25 miles wide. Skye has amazing views, some great mountains and some incredible wildlife, including golden eagles, seals, otters and sea eagles (white-tailed eagles).

White-tailed sea eagles are the fourth biggest raptor in the world, and the rarest raptor in the UK. There are eleven breeding pairs in Skye. They are rare because they were once hunted almost to extinction (like red kites) and they have been reintroduced. They mainly hunt at the coasts but there is one which nests in Fife which my local gamekeeper has seen near my village, which is about 50 miles inland.

Ben's theory about the golden eagle

This week's post is different because it's about someone else's work, not mine. When I wrote about my golden eagle skull a few months ago, I wrote that it had two sets of injuries, one on the back of the head and one on underneath the skull. At the time I thought the first injury was caused by a blow, and the second one underneath was caused a different time by a shotgun pellet.

Ben Garrod, who is a zoologist and skeleton articulator wrote on my Facebook fan page that he had a different theory. This post is about his theory and how I tested it.

The red kite that was mobbed by a crow

This is a very quick post about something amazing that I saw out walking on Sunday. Dad and I were stalking roe deer in Quoiggs wood. We had already seen loads of them when I heard a bird sound like a high-pitched eek, more high pitched than a buzzard.  Then a red kite came down into a small clearing, tried to land on a tree, changing its mind then flew off. Then we saw it was being chased by a crow !

Meeting a golden eagle for real

This weekend I have been away camping with cubs (my last cub camp because I'm moving up to Scouts !) so I'm going to write about something that happened just over a week ago. It was Take Your Child to Work day, and so I had been working with dad who is a photographer that morning, but in the afternoon he had arranged something special.

A few weeks before he had been at a big corporate event where there were falconers and lots of wild birds, including owls and a golden eagle ! He explained to the falconer that I had been sent a golden eagle skull, but I had never seen one for real, and the falconer at Elite Falconry said I could come up and see their two golden eagles !

My amazing golden eagle skull

Since last week I have been hinting about this skull, and now I can finally say what it is. It is a golden eagle skull !

If you haven't read the other two stories before this, I was sent an amazing biscuit tin of bones as a surprise by some I had never met before who worked as a deer stalker in the Highlands of Scotland. He told me he had collected these skulls over his life, and now he was retired and when he died his family were just going to throw them away. He read about me in the newspaper and sent the tin to my village without even a house or street name, but still the postman found the house.

You might think a ten year old boy shouldn't be allowed to have such a precious and rare skull as this, but I have spent six weeks, about 30 emails and phone calls, and contacting two government deartments to make sure I can keep it. From the very first moment I first got it, I told some expert friends, and they gave me very good advice. I checked the law (which is confusing), then got in touch with Scottish Natural Heritage who looked at all the information  I had, and how the bird died, then decided I was allowed to keep it. Then dad phoned DEFRA who said I didn't need any more licences or permissions from them. I have done loads and loads and loads of checking with experts, and I am definitely allowed to keep it. I wrote about all that did in a post yesterday. But here's more about this amazing skull.

The surprise biscuit tin of bones

About a month ago I got a surprise card from the postman to say that he had tried to deliver a parcel to me. I had no idea who it came from, but it was an amazing surprise that showed how kind some people are. There are lots of reasons why this has taken me a month to write this, and one of them is very important and I will write about it more next week. But this week is exciting enough !

The buzzard with the broken neck

Last week I wrote about corvids, which are the family of birds that have crows, magpies and things like that. This week I am going to write about a bird whose skull I have that I think was killed by corvids.

A few months ago, Dad was walking back home through Cat Skull Wood, which is the wood in the Pheasant Woods where I found my cat skull. In a small clearing at the edge of the wood he found this skeleton:

Big box of skulls #4: the bird skulls

This is the fourth week I've written about the cool box of bones I got as a present through the post. I've already written about the leopard skull, the boa constrictor skull and the monkey skulls, and this week this week I'm going to write about the bird skulls !

The red kites at Argaty

Yesterday, me, my mum, my baby brother and my dad went to the red kite centre at Argaty. I like red kites because there are a few nests near my village, but I'm not allowed to say where. In one of my favourite woods you can go and see a pair of red kites flying about and I love watching them.

At the red kite centre at Argaty, you can go and watch the red kites being fed. They only give them a tiny bit of food to make sure the red kites are finding food for themselves. The food they put out is from rabbits and deer, cut into tiny pieces. At 2.30pm we arrived and walked up to a hide, which is like a big shed with lots of flaps on every side where you can sit and watch the birds.

My barn owl skull

I'm doing an extra post this week and next because I'm on half term this week. (The schools in my area get two weeks off this time of year because the children used to help gather the potatoes in the farms.)

This is one of the skulls that Michael the bone collector sent me (together with my amazing badger skull). A badger skull and an owl skull were two of the five skulls that I said I wanted to get this year so it's cool to get them.

Helping to save a buzzard's life

On Tuesday, after school, Mum, Dad, me and my baby brother Sam went on a walk for a nature diary for my school. I had picked a walk in a wood I know really well where I knew I would see tons of wildlife, like red squirrels, roe deer, red kites, buzzards, grey herons, ducks and pheasants. Mum and I went on ahead, and Dad went a different route with Sam in a papoose and said he would meet us to watch the red kites.

Behind the scenes at Perth Museum

On Wednesday, I went to be a VIP at Perth Museum and Art Gallery. A lady at the museum called Linda Allan had seen me when I was in the newspapers and emailed me to ask if I wanted to have a VIP tour of the museum and I said yes I'd love to.

Birds that live near water

This year I've been spotting more and more birds on walks. Here are some of the ones that I've seen near to rivers or lochs.

The strange bird above is a grey heron. I saw that one in the loch at the university and it had a nest, but I seen others in the fields near the castle, and over by the pheasant woods. It is very big and has a long neck which it uses to get fish out of the water to eat.

The dead buzzard

This is a dead buzzard I found in the Pheasant Woods today. Dad and I had been watching a family of roe deer from our favourite watching place, and we found the buzzard a bit further down the valley under some trees.

A family of roe deer, and some new bones

Today me and my dad went on a walk to a wood near Gleneagles, just a few miles from my house. We'd been there before twice, and knew there were roe deer there. We crept into the wood quietly and went round the edges of a clearing. As we went down a dry stream bed, we saw a roe deer watching us. We stopped and hid and saw that there were were three roe deer, a buck, a doe and a fawn.

Winter birds

It's been a great Christmas but very snowy, so it's difficult to see many bones because there is the ground is all covered in lots of snow. Even though its been snowy and cold I've been on lots of walks and seen lots of wildlife, especially birds, so this week I'm just going to write about birds.

Because its been so snowy, the easiest wood to walk in is the Pheasant Wood, on the other side of the river to my village. There are actually lots of pheasant woods around where I live. During the year the gamekeepers look after the pheasants, then in winter people pay to shoot them. Here's a male pheasant on the left with a female pheasant on the right. They have very long tails. I have a pheasant skull in my collection.



Pheasants are quite fat, an they don't like to fly very much, so they just walk around on the ground. Here are what their footprints look like in the snow.

Exploring the Secret Vault

Today, Dad and I went back up to the Secret Vault. It is a secret underground chamber in the middle of a wood that we found by accident ages ago. When we first found it I was on a walk with Mum and Dad and I could see bones at the bottom of it, but we couldn't reach them. I thought one of the bones was human.