My 400th post - and hello Netherlands !

I'm in the middle of exams at the moment, so you may have noticed that my posts recently have been shorter than normal. But since this is my 400th blog post (really !) it seemed like the perfect time to share some good news: there's now a Dutch-language edition of my book !

They've made some changes to the cover (bye bye T-rex !) and changed the title to "Het Grote Bottennoek Van Jake" (which means "Jake's Big Book of Bones"), but otherwise it's the same great book. It's also the fourth foreign edition after the UK version, the USA version (which has my photo on the cover) and the Korean edition.

Next weekend is also going to be very exciting for me: I'm travelling down to the Eden Project in Cornwall for the awards ceremony for the Royal Society Young Person's Book Award. There are six books on the shortlist, and judging has been by childrens' groups all over the UK. Fingers crossed - and I'll post here what the result it as soon as I can (probably on the Monday evening of the 16th).

Thank you again for reading my blog and inspiring me to write 400 posts (as well as breaking through 2,000 followers on Facebook in the last week !) And here's a short video (click to read on) by the Royal Society explaining why my book is on the shortlist:

The best camouflaged animal ever ?

Before I start: I've just flown back in the last few hours from Faclan, the Hebridean Arts Festival in Stornoway. Thank you to everyone who came to my talk at An Lanntair yesterday - it was brilliant to see so many interested faces and sign so many books ! (they completely sold out). Hope to see you again soon !

 This week's post is more of a spot-the-animal. I'd left my trail camera on a roe deer path last week, about a mile west of the badger wood, and among the other things it filmed, I also had a few frames and video that looked like the picture above. Nothing there, I thought, until I looked closer. But actually, there is a quite common but *very* well camouflaged animal there ! It's one that I've only seen myself once. Can you spot it ?

Filming the badgers (video)

This week's blog post is something different - I've put together a video of the badger footage I've filmed since May ! I'm trying out different ways of sharing information, and if this video is popular I'll do more of them in the future. I blogged about how I found the badger sett back in May, and last month I blogged about the shock discovery which brought filming to an end. 

Three other things to quickly tell you:

• If you fancy becoming a nature presenter, and you're aged between 10-16 and live in the UK then you have until Saturday to enter the Cairngorms Nature Your Presenter competition ! You have to put together a 90 second video of you talking to the camera, and it has to include the words: "I would like to present Cairngorms Nature because....". There's more here.
• Next weekend I'm giving a talk in Stornoway at the Faclan Book Festival. It's going to be great, and you can buy tickets here. Hope to see you there !
• In May it was announced that my book had been shortlisted for the Royal Society Young Person's Book Award. The winner out of the shortlist of six will be announced on November 16th at an awards ceremony at the Eden Project in Cornwall. I'll post here who the winner is after it's been announced !

Let me know what you think of the badger video !

Cairngorms Nature Young Presenter Competition

There is a great competition for young naturalists - and time is running out to enter !

There are two National Parks in Scotland. One of them is the Cairngorms National Park. It is located in some of the most beautiful , and is over 4,500 km² in size. Iolo Williams is a Welsh naturalist and TV presenter. He has done quite a lot of work on the BBC Autumnwatch/Winterwatch (which I was on here) and he has teamed up with the Cairngorms and the RSPB  to run a competition for young naturalists. All you have to do to enter is film a short clip.

The missing deer and the strange skull

Up until recently my trail camera has been watching a badger sett, which I wrote about here and here, but since the wood around there is being cut down it seemed the right time to move it to somewhere else, and my two little brothers, Sam (5) and Harry (4) asked if they could find somewhere to put it.

Dad took my brothers out to look for somewhere where they could leave the camera, and they went to the original pine marten wood, where I filmed a lot about two years ago. They were looking for somewhere where they knew animals might come to, and after searching the wood they found a quite fresh roe deer carcass, and left the camera there. But when they went back a week later, there was a surprise !

Five things I loved about the Wigtown Book Festival

Quick note: If you are in Stornoway on Halloween, I'm giving a talk at the Faclan book festival. If you could come along, I'd love to see you.

Last weekend I was really pleased to be doing a drop in session at the Wigtown Book Festival in Dumfries and Galloway. It was a hands-on session as part of the Childrens' Book festival, and was a bit different from previous talks I'd done, so I was really looking forward to it.

It was an early start, though ! I had to get up at 6am and leave at around 7am. Dad drove for two and a half hours to get to Wigtown, and we arrived at around 9:45am.  Wigtown is a pretty small town, but for one week every year it turns into one of the most exciting book festivals in Scotland.

A shock visitor to the badger sett !

Important news: If you're near Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway tomorrow (Sunday), I'll be showing off some of my collection between 11am and 4pm at the Wigtown Book Festival. It's a drop in session, and if you're around I'd love to meet you ! I'll blog more about what it was like next week.

Since May my trail camera has been filming at a badger sett a few miles from my village. I've been lucky enough to get some really great footage of the badgers digging out the holes, bringing up three cubs, playing together, preening each other, and coming back and forth. The wood is very isolated, so I've been leaving the trail camera for weeks at a time. Today was the first time in over three weeks that I went back to check on it - and I got an unpleasant surprise !

Braco 200: The Braco murder hunt

On the 18th January 1978, 15 police officers led by Chief Superintendent Jack Bowman walked out into the snow. They were searching the farmland to the north of my village on one of the UK's biggest murder hunts for 20 years - a spree of five murders across the UK. They were looking for the body of an elderly lady, who they believed had been killed a month earlier and over 400 miles away.

But the oddest thing is this: almost every account of the story gets one detail completely wrong, and I only found out the truth by researching it myself. - read on to find out what it is. And why were they searching at my tiny village 400 miles from the murder scene ? Also why, even after the murderer confessed, was no-one ever convicted ? Read on to find the answers to all these questions !

Chris Packham and two other newsworthy things

This week, instead of one big post, I was going to mention three things which I think are really important: the Chris Packham controversy, Paolo Viscardi's new job, and what I'll be doing at the Wigtown Book Festival at the end of the month.

If you're outside the UK you might not have heard of Chris Packham, but over here he is a very well known naturalist and broadcaster. He's best known for being one of the presenters on BBC Autumnwatch/Winterwatch/Springwatch, but before that he was a presenter on The Really Wild Show. The UK has lots of wildlife presenters, but he is one of the best known.

An interesting skull from a friend

The week before last, fellow bone collector Ric Morris came to my house for dinner with his wife and his daughter. They were on their way back from their holiday in the highlands and islands, where they went beach combing. Dad made made a lovely meal for all of us earlier that day.

After dinner, he told me that he had brought some skulls that he found on the beach for me. We went outside and he showed me the bones he had found. Most of them still had dried flesh, but one or two were clean. One of them was a skull - let's see if you can ID it. Here are some clues: