The law and my amazing mystery skull

I promised that I was going to write this weekend about the extra skull that came in the biscuit tin of bones, and I am still going to but I'm going to write about it tomorrow. First of all I am going to write about what I had to do to work out whether I could keep it.

I'm not going to tell you yet what it is but as soon as I saw it I knew it could have only come from one of two animals and both of them are very rare and special indeed. I was very excited when I saw it, but I was worried that I wouldn't be allowed to keep it. I had to do lots of work to find out whether I could.

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 !

My pile of spare bones in the kitchen

Whenever I come back from a walk, the first room I come into is the kitchen, and this is where the small bones that I bring back end up. The pile grows and grows and grows until Mum goes off on one and I have to tidy them up. At the moment the pile is quite big, so as it's my school holidays at the moment, I went through them to see what I could find. Here is what is there at the moment:

Exploring the deserted castle

Last weekend, I went to explore a derelict castle which is a few miles from my house. Dad had read about it on one of the historic building registers, but it is well hidden, and we had to get permission to visit it. 

It was an amazing find because it is absolutely massive with loads of rooms, towers, servants quarters and even a chapel.

From the outside it looks amazing, just like you would expect a castle to look like. It almost looks lived in. This is how it looks from the north west corner.

Can you guess how I did it ?

Did you fall for my post on Sunday ? I left in lots of clues like the Maydupp (MADE UP) Forest, the Knotreall (NOT REAL) Estate and the Phaycce (FAKE) Woods. There are also no unicorns in Scotland, the fallen trees were due to the storms in November, the tree markings were from a woodpecker, and the footprints I just made up. And haggis are not toilet trained and they don't eat french pancakes ! The video was good fun to make.

My haggis skull, and how to track wild haggis (video)

This is a skull I am very excited about and I have been saving it for ages to write about today !

This is one of the animals most associated with Scotland, like red deer and golden eagles. Haggis are rare and most Scots still only see them once a year, usually towards the end of January. This haggis skull was a tremendous find, as it has the lower jaws and canines. I found it near my village in woods on the Maydupp estate.

Using Google Maps to plan walks

For the last three or four years I have done most of my exploring in the same five woods. Although they are great woods to find bones and watch deer and other animals, they were starting to get a bit boring, so this year I have been trying to find new woods to explore near my house.

I have a customised 1:25,000 scale Ordnance Survey map which is centred on my house, which is amazing and shows all sorts of details. But for exploring in forests, you need satellite pictures as well. Here is why:

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.

The otter incident

This is a story from two years ago, about an amazing skeleton I almost got and why I didn't and how I almost got into trouble instead.

It began when me and Dad were driving to Glasgow to see Star Wars in Concert (which was awesome) when dad spotted something at the side of the road, about a mile outside the village, next to a bridge that goes over a river.  He wasn't sure what it was, so he pulled over and we went to have a look at it.

Strange bones #10: the zigzag bone

On Friday, Dad was out walking in the wood where I found the mortar bomb to check whether it had been blown up where it was (it hadn't, but it was gone). As he was walking back through some fallen trees he spotted something lying on top of the ground that he had never seen before.

He picked it up and brought it back and this week I am going to write about it.