Can you guess which bird this is from ?

First of all: remember if you're around Gravesend this Tuesday I'm giving a talk to Science And More at 7pm 6.30pm for 7pm at No. 84 Tea Room and Eatery, 84 Parrock Road. I'll be talking about bones, how I got started, putting together my book and lots more - it'll be great to see you !

Anyway, back to this week. Well, this is an easy skull to identify. From the long beak, thicker than a snipe or an oystercatcher, it's clearly a bird that eats fish, and at 6.5cm long it's clearly the same as my heron skull...wait, did you say 6.5cm ?!?! That's much too small to be a heron.....

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:

Cleaning a mummified fox skull.

This is really a story about two things - about cleaning a skull and about the amazing lady who gave it to me. At the end of August I came home from a day at my new school to find a lady, called Miss Ford, who I didn't know, was at my house. It was a big surprise !

She said that she read about me in the Telegraph Magazine in February, and she wanted to give some skulls to me. She only knew the village where I lived, so she had driven up from England and asked at my old primary school in my village, who phoned my home, and luckily my dad was in and invited her over.

My harbour porpoise skull

If you were looking carefully when I wrote about my new room you would have noticed that one of the skulls I have put on display is a harbour porpoise ! If you know about skulls, you probably know that they are pretty cool. 

To start with they are technically from the whale family (cetacea). The whale family has two subgroups, one is those with teeth, and the other is Baleen whales which suck in water through stretched tissue. The harbour porpoise and dolphins are from the toothed family, even though this skull doesn't have teeth.

Four animal skulls that were shot in the head

This week's post is about four skulls that I have had in my collection for a while. Two of them - the Chinese water deer (bottom left) and the badger (top right) were gifts, the dog (top left) was bought and the partial fox skull I found myself. 

What all of these have in common is that they have holes or damage to their head that showed that they were killed by being shot.  It is rare to find bullet holes in skulls, since for most hunted species like deer, the hunter aims for the chest and ribs (although I found this red deer stag which I found in 2010 was shot in the head). Here's what the damage showed me:

My muntjac deer skull

There are six types of deer in the UK: roe deer, red deer, fallow, sika, Chinese water deer and muntjac. There are lots of deer around my village, but they are all red and roe deer, so it is hard for me to find a skull of the other types. I was lucky that I got my fallow buck skull from the gamekeeper in my village, but I didn't know how to get sika, Chinese water deer or muntjac.

Then in April I got a message through my Facebook fan page from Miss Bowen Hill who lives in Essex in England. She said her dog had found a muntjac skull and was I interested ? I said yes, definitely and she kindly sent it to me !

The archeological bones, part 2: the teeth

Two weeks ago I started writing about a box of archeological bones I had been given as a present by someone who was moving to another country. This week I am going to write about the teeth in the box.   There were more teeth in the box than any other type of bone, perhaps because teeth last longer than bone. Some were still in fragments of jaw, and others were just loose by themselves.

You can tell a lot from teeth. They can tell you what type of things it ate, how big it was, how old it was, and sometimes what animal it was. I am really good with red and roe deer teeth because I have absolutely tons of them, but this was more of a puzzle because there were lots of different teeth some of which I had never seen before. It was also harder because when teeth are in a jaw it's easier to tell whether they are molars or pre-molars which are the two types of cheek teeth in animals.

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.

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 !

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 monkfish skull and my new fish skull

This is a skull that I was given almost two years ago by Michael Fox (the one that wrote this book). We  had swapped some other skulls then he sent me this one without telling me what it was. I guessed it was some kind of fish or shark when I first saw it, and then he told me it was a monkfish !

Although I haven't written about it for ages, I thought of it this week because I have been finishing off rotting down the fish I found on this walk in January.

My pig skull

When I met Mrs Powell at the Scottish Seabird Centre last year, we swapped some skulls. (I have written about one of the skulls I swapped her here, and wrote about the seal and puffin skulls she gave me back). The other main skull that she gave me was this pig skull. I had wanted a pig skull for a while, and it was one of the skulls I said I wanted to get in 2011. When I wrote that I wanted one, I thought I would have to get a pig head from a butchers, but I was pleased when Mrs Powell said she had one.

My birthday skull

Today is my tenth birthday ! I have a busy day planned and I am going to the cinema and my uncle and aunt have come over to stay as well. I even have a special birthday skull which I am going to write about today.

A few days ago the postman came with a parcel for me. It was from my friend Mrs Powell who is a bone collector in England. I opened it and the first thing I saw was a box full of leaflets about plants which is cool, another box which said "Happy 10th birthday, Jake", which had a birthday card, a present, and another box which had this amazing skull which is from...

My hooked-nosed sea pig skull

This is a post I have been meaning to write for ages. It is about a skull I swapped with my friend Mrs Powell when we met at the Scottish Seabird Centre in October. I meant to write about it the next week, but then all sorts of things happened, and then I wrote posts about being on Autumnwatch so I haven't had chance to write about it until now.

If you were just looking at this skull you might thing it was from some kind of savage animal like a bear  or a big cat (although the teeth are wrong for those). It is about 25cm long, which makes it one of the biggest skulls I have (apart from my cow, my red deer and my fallow deer). It feels chunky, rough and solid, and a bit frightening, so it can be a big surprise that it is actually from....

Two amazing puffin skulls

Two weeks I wrote about the Scottish Seabird Centre and meeting Mrs Powell who is another bone collector. We met to swap two red skulls for a pig skull and a seal skull, but she kindly gave me some extra things including these amazing Atlantic puffin skulls.

Puffins are amazing birds. They can both fly and swim and they have to swim to catch fish in the water. The best thing about these skulls is that they have the beak sheats. Puffins are easy to spot because of their really bright beaks. Here is a stuffed puffin at the National Museum of Scotland:

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.

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 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.

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 !