Jake's Bones

Finding out a young deer's age by its teeth

2012-02-11T17:31:00.000Z

When I find new deer skulls, or when I write about them here, I try to work out the age of them. Sometimes you can tell by the size, sometimes you can tell by whether the plates of the skull are fused, and sometimes the pedicles and antlers help. But the most useful way is to look at the teeth. The...

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My pig skull

2012-02-05T18:41:00.001Z

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...

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Lots of birds, and a mysterious find by the river

2012-01-28T21:17:00.000Z

This week I have been away skiing in the Cairngorms, so the walk Dad and I planned today was fairly easy. We decided to walk along one of three rivers in my village, which is mostly straight, but we knew that sometimes there were otters down there. We didn't see any otters but we did find something...

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A waterfall, a watermill and a brand new wood

2012-01-22T19:12:00.001Z

Around my house there are about a dozen woods that I have explored already, and this year I want to find new woods to explore. Last Saturday night Dad looked on a map and found a new wood that he thought would be good to explore. We had a good time exploring it last Sunday and found three new...

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How not to identify bones

2012-01-15T15:39:00.000Z

About three weeks ago Kristina Kilgrove wrote on her blog about a human skeleton that had ben laid out wrong with the legs swapped over and back to front. It was a fun post to try and spot all the mistakes. On Friday Dad showed me a load of photographs he has spotted on a stock library called...

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Strange bones #9: a horribly broken bone

2012-01-08T14:37:00.001Z

There is a wood on a moor near my house which I started exploring last year. It is difficult to get to, because you need to cross a field, go down into a steep valley cross a stream and up the other side. The wood is on a steep hill, and some of the ground is very wet and soggy making it difficult...

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2011 has been another brilliant year

2011-12-31T07:00:00.000Z

2011 has been the fifth year I have been bone collecting, and the third year I have had this blog, and I think it has been the best year yet. I have explored new woods, watched deer and foxes, spotted new birds and found some fantastic skulls and bones. • The Best Bits of 2011 The...

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The five skulls I would most like to find in 2012

2011-12-29T13:04:00.001Z

At the end of every year so far that I have been writing my blog, I have written about the five skulls I hope to collect in the next year. Most of the time I have been really lucky, and I have found them, but there have always been some that I didn't find. It helps me think about what I can collect...

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Have a happy Christmas !

2011-12-23T05:05:00.000Z

Happy Christmas everyone ! I'm hoping to get loads of presents and I hope you do too !

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My birthday skull

2011-12-18T07:03:00.000Z

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...

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My hooked-nosed sea pig skull

2011-12-11T17:42:00.000Z

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...

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Why swan sternums are strange bones

2011-12-03T20:04:00.000Z

Last week me and dad were on a walk up to the geese lakes to hopefully see the greylag geese that come here over the winter. We didn't see any of the greylags, so on the way back we decided to walk along the Rhynd lochs which I wrote about here. We walked along the very edge of the Upper Rhynd...

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Remember I'm on Autumnwatch tonight ! (Updated)

2011-11-25T08:09:00.001Z

Updated ! - I've added the piece from the Perthshire Advertiser and the video of my clip from Autumnwatch below ! Remember tonight I'm on Autumnwatch ! It was planned to be on the Autumnwatch Unsprung, but now I'm on the main one on BBC1 at 8.30pm ! If you missed it you can watch it on iPlayer...

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Strange bones #8: The Autumnwatch mystery !

2011-11-23T07:54:00.000Z

This is another special post about being filmed for BBC Autumnwatch, and I need your help ! When Chris Packham came to talk to me, he showed me a bone that had been sent in by an Autumnwatch viewer who lived in Warwickshire in England. She didn't know what it was and Chris asked if I could help....

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Today I was filmed for BBC Autumnwatch !

2011-11-21T19:08:00.000Z

For the last week I have been keeping a big secret, but now I can tell everyone. I am going to be on one of the BBC Autumnwatch Live programmes ! It was filmed today at my house with the main presenter Chris Packham. One of the Autumnwatch producers emailed me about three weeks ago asking if I...

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Finding new deer bones in the Gleneagles wood

2011-11-19T19:16:00.000Z

Last weekend, Dad and I went to the Gleneagles wood. It is a dense pine wood with a two really big clearings which has lots of roe deer, buzzards and red squirrels. I have written about it before, but I have hardly been there this year. We went in the wood at the north-east corner, and went...

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Two amazing puffin skulls

2011-11-13T17:15:00.000Z

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...

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Finding great bones in old ice houses

2011-11-06T18:15:00.002Z

I was going to write about something else this week, but I had a really good walk yesterday and found some great new bones. In the village where I live there used to be a big country mansion called Ardoch House in the woods which I call the Pheasant Woods which was built in the early 1700s. It...

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Happy Halloween !

2011-10-31T07:03:00.000Z

Happy Halloween ! This year instead of a scary face or skull I did the Death Star, because Star Wars is cool.

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Half term trips: the Scottish Seabird Centre

2011-10-30T20:05:00.000Z

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...

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Half term trips: The National Museum of Scotland

2011-10-22T14:17:00.000+01:00

Last week me mum, dad, Harry and Sam all went to the new National Museum of Scotland which is in Edinburgh. It isn't really a new museum but they closed it for years to move things about. It reopened about two months ago and now it's even better. The picture above is of the big natural history...

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I now have 100 skulls in my room !

2011-10-19T20:32:00.001+01:00

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...

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Half term trips: Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre

2011-10-16T21:11:00.001+01:00

Last week and next week were half term for me. In Perth and Kinross you get two weeks off in the autumn half term because Perthshire has a lot of farms and in olden days before there was X Factor the children were needed on the farms at this time to dig up potatoes. So this week and next week I...

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My nine-banded armadillo skull

2011-10-08T13:59:00.002+01:00

Earlier this year I got a surprise parcel from someone who read my blog called Ben Williams. It was full of amazing skulls from other countries and I wrote about it in four posts here, here, here and here. After I got the parcel he sent me one more surprise skull which he got from one of his...

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My five pointer red deer skull

2011-10-02T20:33:00.000+01:00

Three months ago Dad and I were walking in Titus Well wood, and we explored a spot where the gamekeeper throws away deer heads and lower legs. It is a steep slope in a pine forest sloping down from a forest track, and it has been a good place to find lots of red deer skulls including my spiker...

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