The gnawed badger skull

The gnawed badger skull

If you think about it, there is very little in the way of calcium available in the wild, which means that most calcium dependent critters have to resort to some odd ways to find it. The most common ways of finding it in the wild are snail shells, and bones.  If you find any bones in grassland or woods, chances are, they will be nibbled slightly where rodents have been at them. Just like this badger skull that I found near an abandoned badger set.

As you can see, the sagitarial crest, eye orbits and upper jaws have all been completely or partially gnawed off, and several small holes have been chewed through to the brain pan.
You don’t see these very often, as once the damage is done, the skulls can crumble, and even if they are found, not many people keep them, as they just look like really damaged, broken skulls that no one wants.

This is only the second gnawed skull I have found, the other one being the ancient sheep skull ( see article farm animals 4 when i get around to putting it up) but I hope to find more, as they are totally unique.

Farm animals 2

Farm animals 2

Hey everyone, this week, I thought I would show you another of my farm themed animal skulls, a ram. This guy is huge, and looks very good as pride of place in any photo or display, as, even though its far from the biggest, it is well bleached ( naturally by the sun) and symmetrical.

As you can see, it only has horn cores, not the keratin sheaths ( the same stuff that hair, nails and hooves are made of) as these are not fixed, and can slide on and off once the animal is dead. (see any of my articles about bird skulls, they generally have slide on beak sheaths)

also, its quite well bleached, which is what happens when bone sits in the sun, and is dried out by it, with only a few slightly dark patches, probably from contact with the ground or leaves sitting on it.



This skull was kindly gifted to me by Emma Kerridge, the chief education officer at Lackford Lakes, a nature reserve that is run by Suffolk wildlife trust, and where I volunteer on occasion. Emma does a lot of great work, creating workshops and activity days for children aged four onwards, and is privileged to be gifted with many skulls by members of the staff team, and donations from the public for use in displays, and occasionally we do trades if she wants a specific skull for a themed activity day.  Check out their website for dates and fantastic nature photos.

http://www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org/reserves/lackford-lakes

A crocodile head through the post.

A crocodile head through the post.

When I got home from work today, there was a pair of boxes waiting for me on the doorstep, which is always exciting. One contained my new original Bon Jovi “slippery when wet” 1986 ten track LP in it, the other contained a preserved crocodile head, that I swapped a Roe deer stag skull for.

My initial observations, whilst unpackaging it on the kitchen table whilst humming along to “you give love a bad name” was wow. I’m really happy with this swap, as it looks fantastic, and while I’m really into skulls, I do like taxidermy (stuffed animals) a fair bit too. Its really good quality word, and the resin used to seal the scales has given it a wet, lifelike look, as if it has just emerged from some dark pond. While these heads are fairly common, a by-product of the swamp culls, and often sold to tourists in America, I’m sure not many have made their way to the UK, so its definitely a good addition for the collection.
I just wonder what the postman would say if he knew what it was he had delivered!

My thanks today to Ryan Pettit of Bristol for emailing me and offering a swap, this article is dedicated to you dude. As always, feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, corrections or deals to offer.

Fresh find today

Fresh find today, a swan skull (incomplete)

I went for a walk with the dog after work today, and decided to follow a river I haven’t travelled for some time, and I hit the jackpot, a new species for the collection, a swan. I actually found quite a few bones, but no feathers, which means it had been there a long time. This is the first bird larger than a duck that I have added to my collection, and I am quite excited about its size, as, even without the complete braincase, it is six inches in length.

These photos were taken as soon as I got home, which is why its still a little grubby,  however, as bird bones are so light and weak (to help them fly) they are very hard to clean, which is why I have not cleaned it to make it nice and bright. With most skulls I give them a good wash/clean, and with some I give them a dose in chemicals to whiten them. At some point in a later article, ill go through a step by step guide to cleaning and whitening skulls.

For now, I’m just happy to have a cool new find to add to the shelves.

My cigar box of delights… #1

My cigar box of delights…

Over the years, I have been given many small, fragile or plain odd items, which I keep separate from the rest of my collection in a wooden case once used as a case for fifty finest Cuban cigars but which now contains:

Small bags of rat, mouse shrew and vole skulls from owl pellets
A carved piece of deer antler
An articulated mouse skeleton (homemade, again, from an owl pellet)
An amulet of deer fur
A loose fox jaw with every bone still in place
A jar of assorted loose teeth
A pair of huge cow teeth
A large and slightly scary pair of deer incisors (the hidden weapon of muntjac)
The right half of the face of a cat skull.

The muntjac incisors, its hard to get a good frame of reference, but the unbroken one is three inches long.

The muntjac fangs inserted into a spare muntjac deer skull, you can see how big they are.

This is the fragment of cat skull as seen from the side, it was given to me by my friend Digby who saw it in his garden.

This it the cat skull fragment as seen from the front, I know it is from a cat, as I have two other cat skulls in my collection to compare it to.

All the teeth from the tooth jar, from top left we have red deer incisors, deer molars, fox molars
Middle row, two human teeth from a dentist with similar interests to mine, the rest are rabbit teeth,
Bottom row are all pig teeth ( see last weeks article)

This is the carved and polished piece of antler, showing the honeycomb build inside

This it the other side of the  carved horn showing the patterning and taper.

The fox jaw, like I said, it has all the teeth still in the mandible, which is quite a rare thing to see… check out that canine… its not clean yet, but its only mud, so ill probably use it in a future article on cleaning and whitening bones.

The cows teeth, its hard to get a frame of reference, but each of these is 2.5 inches long.

The deer fur amulet, this was a joke gift from a friend, who saw it at a stall at a wiccan/pagan/goth fair in Norfolk and thought of me… ( I don’t know what she was trying to say…

I hope you enjoyed todays article, and I intend to do a follow up article on the rest of the weird and wonderful items from the cigar box of mystery…

How I nearly got a pig skull

How I nearly got a pig skull

Technically, I did have a pig skull, for a single night… I went with my family to a country fair, and at lunch, whilst enjoying a nice pork sandwich from a hog roast stall, I befriended the young guy working there and he gave me the head from the pig roast in a sealed black bag, having cut off most of the meat and telling me that boiling it would remove the remaining scraps.  Apparently, they give it away at most events as a lot of collectors and art students ask.

I took it home, stuck it in mums biggest pan and let it soak, and I was impressed at how well it worked, as I had heard that boiling can soften bone and cause it to rot. Then I left it outside to dry out overnight which was the last time I saw it…

When I got up the next morning, I went downstairs to find that the skull was gone, except for a jaw fragment and the thick bony chunk from the base of the skull where the spinal cord joins. My dog, smelling the skull, which still smelled like bacon from the hours it had spent on a hog roast, had eaten the  huge foot long skull!  She had gnawed on it for hours, wearing it away until it was nearly all gone. All I have left from what would have been one of my largest skulls, along with my horse and red deer stag skulls, is half a dozen molars (the chewing and grinding teeth)  and seven incisors (the cutting teeth in herbivores and carnivores).

 Those large molars are huge, bigger than a two pound coin,  which is probably why my dog couldn’t break them with her jaws. While most of the incisors are small, one is long and thin (bottom left), and was only showing by about a centimetre or so, with the other two inches hidden away in the jawbone.

So, despite all my hard work, I still don’t have a pig skull, but maybe this summer ill ask at a few events and see if I can get another one.

Next time, ill be showing my cigar box of delights, a wooden case filled with odd, small and fragile or rare pieces from my collection, so expect the unexpected and bizarre .

Farmyard animals. #1

Farmyard animals. #1
In an effort to expand my collection,I decided to include all native animals, not just wild ones, and so I turned my eye to farm animals.

Farm animals are, in their own way, harder to come by than wild animals, as they are rarely going to be lying on the side of the road or roaming the countryside. Also, few farmers are going to appreciate you stalking through their herds looking for sickly animals or trying to acquire the heads of their cattle….

As most animals end their lives in an abattoir, finding their remains is pretty unlikely, so buying the skulls is probably your best bet, however, I have always tried to avoid buying skulls, as I want to keep it a hobby, not business, or trying to find wild sheep, goats and horses  (cows are pretty tough to find, and I still don’t have one)  or trading something you have in exchange for one.

(I’m always willing to trade my spare skulls for more new and exciting ones, if anyone is interested, just drop me a message)

However, there are some places that you can find wild farm animals, and they are generally quite wild and exciting places, like Dartmoor and Wales, Wales being where I found my first sheep skull.

It’s a young male, and I found it in Snowdonia, at the bottom of a ravine whilst on a silver Duke of Edinburgh award expedition  amongst quite a few skeletons, and I’m guessing its quite a common place for sheep to fall. anyway, in that week, I must have seen two dozen sheep skeletons, so if anyone is headed over to Wales then keep an eye out on the hills if you go for a hike.

Next time ill be telling the story of how I nearly added a pig skull to my collection, and how I still have about half the teeth from that skull.

My first horns

My first horns

So there you go, that’s how I got hooked into the wonderful world of bone hunting… (see last two articles) now this next chapter marks the next step I took, which was to take steps into an interest in taxidermy and  deer skull mounts, all caused by this next find.

Up to now,  nearly all the skulls I had found so far had been from species that have very little variations between males and females. But this next find was instantly recognisable as a proud and fierce male buck or stag.

I found him whilst out dog walking with my parents in a wood at the foot of our land. I spotted him in a dried up little creek, just a skull and a couple of longer bones such as tibia and femurs. It had obviously been washed down from higher up the bank, and collected in the roots at the bottom of the creek bed. I guess the smaller and lighter bones had been washed away, further down where the dried up creek joins a small river.

As he was my first definitively gender identifiable find ( and because I was 14 at the time) ,I named him Alfie, and he is still referred to as such amongst my family as he was the first of many that my parents have helped my find and recvover, the most memorable of which was the horse skeleton I intend to cover in a later post. I thing their presence at Alfie’s discovery, seeing how excited and interested I was, was and still is the reason that my parents continue to take an interest in my hobby, actively encouraging and supporting me in a pastime that many consider a little macabre and creepy…

until next time folks, keep collecting

The next step.

The next step.

Ok, so I already told you how I first became interested in skull collecting, but this is how I started to build my collection.

The first two skulls on my shelf had come to me through dumb luck, so I was unsure how to expand into my newfound hobby. Like all tech savvy teenagers, I turned to google, and through the advice of several people in the know, I set out on my bike with an empty rucksack, plastic bags and a trowel.

On my first couple of trips, I blasted down every country lane at high speeds, stopping every half a kilometre to poke about in bushes… needless to say, I found nothing. Frustrated by this, and yet sure that there must be more bony goodies out there, I began to slowly cruise on my bike, peering into the hedgerow and stopping regularly, normally just to find bleached sticks. But, not ten minutes from home, I stumbled across a chunk of bone collector goldmine, road kill…

Now, I don’t mean the sticky smelly kind you see crushed into the tarmac, but a neat pile of sun bleached white bones in a grass verge away from the edge of the road. In anticipation for my first find “au natural “ I had been skimming  animal tracking and sighting handbooks before bed which had left me with a beginners eye in skull identification.

This enabled me to correctly guess the species I had found ( the first time I had guessed correctly based only on what I could see), so what had I found, the rarest of finds maybe? No, I had come across possibly the most hated road wildlife after pheasants, a muntjac deer. A female (doe or hind to be precise). Still, I don’t think I had ever been as excited as I was right then, carefully packing it away in my rucksack and rushing home on my bike.

Now, a quick word on muntjac, I'm told that in some parts of Britain, they are never seen, such as Scotland, but here in Suffolk, they are actually  more common than clouds, and as such, being an invasive species, they are regarded as little more than large rats. You cannot leave your house for more than twenty seconds without nearly running over one in your car…

now, until the next time... thanks for reading.

Welcome! from humble beginings...

Welcome!

Hi, I’m Will, I’m nineteen and I’m a bone collector…
With interests like mine, archaeology, militaria, forensics and taxidermy, bone and skull collecting has always been a hobby I have enjoyed, with me instinctively picking up loose bones from the age of about five whilst on family walks and picnics.

However, I didn’t really start keeping or studying skulls until one day in summer, 2005. My family took a mushroom collecting event day on local heathland, and I stepped off the path in pursuit of fungi but instead stumbled over the skeleton of what at the time I thought was a small fox.

I picked up the skull as it was completely clean, no dried on hair skin or mud, and slipped it in my bag as a curio… once I returned home, I got onto Google  and discovered I had in fact stumbled upon a large male badger..

It was this thrill of discovery and hunt for identification that got me hooked on bones.

 This would have probably have been an isolated incident except that the very next day, whilst visiting a friend I found another skull on the edge of the river at the bottom of his garden.






Again, to the Google! This time, it really was a fox, and the obsession began to expand. So suddenly, I had two large skulls on my desk, and I began to wonder…

Now, seven years later, I have a huge collection of skulls and skeletons I would like to share with you, so if you’re interested in bones, wildlife or just want something to do in the evenings, take a peek, subscribe and check back regularly, as I have over one hundred items to post, a community to build, projects to document, and most importantly of all, never be shy to comment, ask, correct and wonder.

Until tomorrow night…