The puzzle of the three-legged deer

This might look like a boring collection of bones to you, but it shows something quite strange. These are bones I have known about for a while. I first wrote about the red deer body in May 2010 (the picture is the big one under "the three dead red deer") and it wasn't until a year later that I noticed something strange about the bones and collected them. I called this collection "Yvette" because it was the 25th set of bones and I name them alphabetically.

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 !

Strange bones #10 - what is this ?

This is something that is a real mystery - can you help ?

I found this about three weeks ago at the Gleneagles wood (which I wrote about going deer stalking in). We found it under a tree at south east corner of the wood, just by a clearing. When I first saw it I thought it was just a piece of wood and not worth bringing home but dad thought it might be interesting. It's been at home for three weeks now and we still don't know what it is !

The roe deer with three antlers

This week's post is about something I bought on eBay rather than something I found myself. I prefer to find things myself but I saw this and I quite liked it and it's quite unique because you don't often see a roe deer with three antlers.

I really like bones (and antlers) that have grown strange because it makes me the only one in the world with something like that. Some of my favourite bones are a broken front leg, a broken femur, a broken tibia, a red deer with only one antler, a deer with three legs (that I haven't written about yet), and lots of others like the golden eagle with the skull injury and the shotgun pellet hole.

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 !

Watching seabirds in the Forth

Last weekend, Dad said I was going to have a surprise on Sunday morning. We got up early, and he told me to dress warm even though it was supposed to be warm anyway. We left the house at 7am, and I didn't know where I was going. He drove almost all the way to Edinburgh and parked right inbetween the Forth bridges. Then he told me that we were going on a seabird boat cruise that was part of the RSPB Scottish Birdfair !

The ancient horse jaw

Near the end of last year I went on a walk up to The Pheasant Woods which are on the other side of the river to the village. The Pheasant Woods are a collection of six or seven small woods and four lakes which used to be part of a big country estate. The country house was knocked down years ago but the ice houses and some other buildings are still there. It's a great place to find bones and watch roe deer and buzzards but I've explored it so much I don't often go there any more.

This time I went up in the afternoon and I was walking around and then I found this on the ground. It was very well camouflaged that I thought it was a big bit of tree bark. When I picked it up I realised it was a big jaw and I thought it was off a cow. I spent about two hours searching for the rest of the skull and skeleton but never found them.

Stalking deer in the Gleneagles Wood

I try and do one big walk a week with dad, usually at the weekend. There is always a kind of plan. Sometimes it is to watch deer, sometimes it is to explore new woods or deserted buildings, and sometimes to look for bones. Sometimes it is a bit of all three. This is about a walk I did two weeks ago where we went to watch roe deer.

The wood I chose was one I call the Gleneagles Wood because it is close to the Gleneagles Hotel. It is set on a heather moor, and is mostly dense pine trees with two big clearings. I have been here a lot. I first wrote about it here in January 2010, and the last time I wrote about it was last November. But this time was a bit special because I discovered something new !

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.