Learning how to use my Bushnell trail camera

I spent a lot of time in woods looking for deer and other animals. After I broke my leg earlier this year dad came up with the idea that we could go up to the woods for a hour and just sit and wait to see what animals would come. That got me wondering: what waited for a week what would we see ? Obviously you can't wait in a wood for a week, but you can set up a trail camera (Americans call it a trophy camera, no idea why).

So since then I have wanted a trail cam, and decided it would be the first thing I bought with my book money. It is a small camera that you set up in the countyside and it takes a pic, or shoots videos when it detects movement. I asked on Twitter and people generally said Bushnell trail cams are the best, especially the ones with "invisible" lighting at night. So me and dad looked at prices, but the newer models were quite expensive, and I wasn't sure how often I would use it. So we got a older, used Bushnell 119436C cam, with my first book money. This is how it looks !

When roe deer antlers "go back"

When my room was being changed with new display cabinets for my bones in the summer, I moved this skull that had been hidden away on a high shelf, back on top of my display cabinet. It is from a roe buck (male) but is different to how you would think it would look. 

Some bone collectors like to have perfect skulls but I like weird or misshapen skulls as much, because they tell a story of the animals life. Here the nose bones have gone, and the antlers are more bent back than all my other roe buck skulls.  When the antlers are in velvet, they are more soft and can bend because it is not getting enough nutrients, but when they are out of velvet the antlers are hard and can't bend. 

The epic battle between Homer and Flanders

For most of the year the red deer stags (males) and hinds and calves (female and kids) live in two separate groups, but in the autumn, the 'rut' begins when red deer stags want to have sex with the females. They split up, go find the females, and get a group of them together, called a harem. The stags then fight with each other for females, and only the biggest and strongest end up with females, so that 80% of each year's calves are fathered by only 20% of the males. (It's a bonkers way to have kids, but it's still better than what salmon have to do.)

For the last few weeks I have been watching my local red deer during the rut, like I did last year. It's difficult to do, because deer are hard to track (I wrote a guide here), and harder to sneak up on. Even so I've seen some great action this autumn !

21 ways how I would create an amazing museum

I have been to a LOT of museums. Some have been massive, and have loads of money, like the Natural History Museum (that's where the first picture is from). Others have been tiny, like the D'Arcy Thompson museum in Dundee. I once even went to a museum that was two rooms in a man's house. All of them have been cool in their own way. I even wrote about two very different museums in London earlier this year, and why I preferred the much smaller one, although both were brilliant.

So if I could make my own museum, and control everything, what would I do ? These are the 21 ways I would make my museum absolutely fantastic for everyone, especially kids.

What's in my rucksack ?

If you want to find animal bones you have to explore where the animals live. But a lot of the time animals choose to live in wild and isolated places well away from humans. If I want to look for roe deer one of the places I go is a cold and windy moor which is over ten miles long and which is well away from main roads. If I want to watch red deer I have to go up into the hills and I can end up miles from the nearest road.

Often it's snowy or wet which makes it more difficult to keep safe.That means that on on my walks, I have to always carry a rucksack with lots of equipment and clothing to keep me safe and to make sure I can bring back any great things I find. Here's what's in my rucksack at the moment !

Exploring the history of old farmhouses

There are dozens of old houses near where I live. I have written before about some of them, like the deserted castle and the ruined mansion. Most of the abandoned houses were used by farmers or shepherds 100 years ago. Nowadays less farms are needed because machinery like tractors, combine harvesters and quad bikes makes it easier to run a bigger farm so not as many farmhouses are needed any more.

All of these old houses are on land owned by Blackford farms, which is owned by Mr Al Tajir, Scotland's richest man. He hardly ever sells houses on his land, even if people want to buy them, so they gradually rot away. I think it's important that someone records and remembers these old houses, because a lot won't be there by the time I grow up. I try and visit every old house I find, and dad sometimes takes photographs to record them. (His photographs are the black and white ones.) Read on to find out what I discovered that was really amazing from 150 years ago !

"I've found a bone...but what is it ?"

I currently get about 750 emails a year and I try to respond to every single one of them. A lot of the emails I get are people asking "I've found a bone, but what is it ?", asking me to identify bones that they have found but they can't work out what they are from. Sometimes the bones are actually quite simple, but you have to look at them in a certain way to work out what they are.

Over the summer I've been photographing common bones that I find on walks, the sort of thing that I don't look at for long any more because I have others at home, or because I find so many of them. I hope this helps others trying to identify bones they have found !

Five cool things I've found on walks

I usually write here about the bones I find, but sometimes I also find other interesting things that I bring back home. I've written before about finding old poison bottles, shell cases, feathers and shells, and recently I've found more cool stuff.

The first one is a bit of a puzzle. I know what it is, what animal it is from, but I can't work out how it got there, so I need your help to figure it out !

Dissecting bird pellets

It can be difficult to bones of even quite big animals like foxes or deer, so you might think it's impossible to find really small bones, like those from voles or mice. In fact it's easy if you can find bird pellets and over the spring and summer I collected loads in the woods. Some of them were from walks that dad did alone when I broke my leg like the one with the trapped roe, and others were ones I found myself, like on my one-hour challenge. A good place to look is in pine forests, or at the base of trees at the edges of fields.

I've written about pellets before and at the time I thought owls were the only birds that left them. In fact loads of birds spit them up, like raptors, herons and crows. What happens is that a bird eats its prey but it cant digest the bones or fur which stay in its stomach. Later on it vomits them up so it spits them out with the fur. Anyway, I has a close look at nine pellets and this is what I found....

Today is a MAJOR milestone for my book !

Tomorrow is a special date for three reasons.  Firstly, it means my book is now officially finished ! It has been written, designed, fact checked, photographed and it is now sent off to be printed ! The Second is that it is now about six five months until the official release date in the shops, which is the 3rd February 2014 in the UK and 4th March 2014 in the USA (a month earlier than I originally thought). Thirdly, it is now almost exactly a year since TickTock first contacted me to ask if I was interested in doing a book.

LOADS has happened since then, and LOADS more work is still to come !