A surprise box from Alaska

It has been extremely wintery here in Scotland for the last few days. Earlier in the week we had six inches of snow overnight: then the next day, we had double that, followed by a storm Even the pine marten's nest was destroyed in a storm last week (luckily the pine marten is okay though, here's a video of it yesterday !).

Many animals are really adapted for living in cold climates, and it doesn't get much colder than Alaska, one of the US states which is up besides Canada. A very kind man called Mr McDonough who works for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game contacted me last summer, asking me if I was interested in any skulls from his area. All of the skulls he suggested were amazing, like a moose and a coyote, but there were practical (and legal !) difficulties with such a big gift. Then this box arrived - read on to see what was inside !

My (almost) elephant skull

If you were asked what the two closest living relatives are to the elephant, you would think along the lines of something grey, hard-skinned and massive, and so guess that it might be a rhino or a hippo. The other close relative to the elephant is the sea cow - that's manatees and dugongs - which are heavy and grey, but they are aquatic. The other one is much harder to guess !

It all came about because of a visitor to my blog who also runs a taxidermy business in South Africa called Blue Duiker and who very kindly asked if I would be interested in a skull from there ! So a few weeks ago I was sent the skull of one of the closest living relatives to the elephant - and it arrived in a much smaller box than you might think ! That's because the close relative to the elephant is in fact:

My African Grey Parrot skull

My village in Scotland doesn't have many parrots, so I had to buy this skull off ebay. I bought it at the end of last year but didn't get round to writing about it until now, when I can't go on walks because of my stupid broken leg.

If you are at all interested in bird skulls, parrot skulls are particularly interesting. All bird skulls show how that particular type of bird gets food, like the thin long beak of an oystercatcher, or the curved short bills of raptors, or the very specialised beaks of crossbills. Parrots have evolved over time to specialise in eating hard seeds, but they look completely different to, say, finches which also eat seeds.

My kangaroo skull

This is a skull I have had for a while but I haven't got round to writing about it until now. It was a special gift from one of dad's friend's Sarah who lives in the other Perth, the one in Australia. She sent me a package of something she had found by the side of the road, and she knew it was a kangaroo but not exactly what sort. She cleaned it up herself, and sent it through the post. It only took four days to go 15,000km !

The five skulls I would most like to find in 2012

At the end of every year so far that I have been writing my blog, I have written about the five skulls I hope to collect in the next year. Most of the time I have been really lucky, and I have found them, but there have always been some that I didn't find. It helps me think about what I can collect over the next year, and where I might find them.

Half term trips: The National Museum of Scotland

Last week me mum, dad, Harry and Sam all went to the new National Museum of Scotland which is in Edinburgh. It isn't really a new museum but they closed it for years to move things about. It reopened about two months ago and now it's even better.

The picture above is of the big natural history gallery. They have moved all the animals around and mixed them all up. Here are some of the things that I saw when I visited.

I now have 100 skulls in my room !

This is an extra long post but I think you will like it. This week I reorganized all the bones in my room and got an amazing surprise. Dad added even more shelves so I could put even more skulls out.  This next picture is what my room looks like if you take a photo all around (click for a bigger one)

My six-banded armadillo skull (Updated)

UPDATED: It is a six banded armadillo, not a nine-banded one which is what I originally wrote !

Earlier this year I got a surprise parcel from someone who read my blog called Ben Williams. It was full of amazing skulls from other countries and I wrote about it in four posts here, here, here and here. After I got the parcel he sent me one more surprise skull which he got from one of his friends. It's a really interesting skull that I wouldn't have found myself. It is an armadillo skull. There are twenty types of armadillo, and this one is a nine-banded six banded armadillo because it has a long snout. This type of armadillo comes from North, South and Central America South America and they are so many of them they can be considered a pest.

My crocodile and alligator skulls

This week I am going to write about two really unusually presents I got. Even though I still have loads of skulls from Scotland still to collect, it's still really nice to get skulls from other places in the world.

I got these from two different friends. Dad and I have checked CITES which says which animal bones can be moved between each country, and we think I am allowed to have these but CITES is a bit complicated, so I haven't named the people who gave me these in case I get them into trouble.

The Ulster Museum in Belfast

My mum is from Northern Ireland and we all go over in Easter time to see her family. Yesterday was my last day in Belfast and we went to see the Ulster Museum.

Big box of bones #3: The monkey skulls

This is the third week that I have been writing about a fantastic parcel of skulls I was sent. Last week I wrote about a snake skull, and the week before that I wrote about a leopard skull. This week I am going to write about these brilliant monkey skulls.

Big box of bones #2: The snake skull

BIG NOTE FROM JAKE: In 2013, when my book was being fact-checked, Paolo Viscardi, my contributing editor, noticed this was a python skull, not a boa skull as I first thought, so I've updated this post in December 2013 by crossing out the wrong bits.

Last week I wrote about how I got a great box of skulls through the post as a present, and that I was going to write about them over several weeks. This week I am going to write about this fantastic snake skull.

This is a very different type of skull than almost almost all the other ones I have. That makes it cool because it's different, but difficult because there is nothing I have to compare it to.

Big box of bones #1: The big cat

About a month ago I got an email from someone called Ben Williams. He said he had some old skulls he collected when he was a boy, and would I like them ? I said yes, and I got this amazing box of brilliant skulls which I am going to write about for the next four or five weeks.

My new beaver skull

Last year I got an email from a bone collector in the USA. His name was Steve Dean and he had found my website on the internet, and he sent me an email to say he liked it. He asked if I would like any skulls from America. I thought about it, and asked if he had a beaver skull, and he did !

The McManus Museum in Dundee

At the end of the summer, I went with Mum and Dad to the McManus museum in the middle of Dundee. I actually went there twice. The first I went because when I was at Perth Museum they said the McManus museum was really good. The second time I went was because my friend Catherine who is a archeozoologist was doing a workshop there on bones.

More skulls from Perth Museum

After I had my VIP tour of Perth Museum, I went to look at the skulls on display on the main bit. Here are some of the best ones. All of these were from animals that you used to get in Scotland but don't anymore.

• Wolf skull



This one is a wolf skull. I saw real life wolves at the Scottish Deer Centre last year. You could see them quite close, but there were big high fences around them. I was there when they fed the wolves. They brought them raw meat and threw it in the enclosure. The wolves could smell the raw meat when it was being brought to them, even when it was a mile away.

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.

A surprise find in a new wood

This is a skull I never thought I'd find on a walk. I found it a week ago while exploring a new wood, looking for a herd of roe deer.

We started to explore one corner of the wood, and worked all the way around until we camee back where we started. We had seen grey squirrels and three roe deer, and then dad found a front leg and a shoulder blade. It looked too big to be a rabbit, but too small to be a roe, so he thought it was maybe a fox. Then we searched all round that part for new bones, and we found this skull, lying upside down besides a log.

Some links that I like

Me and my dad have been poorly and have not done any walks for a few weeks because of the rain, so here are some links to some stories that I like:

What I'm working on at the moment

I've been really lucky on walks recently, and have a load of new bones to work on. Here are some of the ones I've found in the last month or so.

Sheep skull

I wrote about finding this here.

I've cleaned up the sheep skull, and it now is on my shelves in my room. I'm going to write more about it later. I never found the other horn or the other part of the jaw, which is a shame, even though Daddy went back to try and find them. It would have been great if we had all the bits. But it's still the best sheep skull I have, and I have four.

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