Cows and owl skull

This morning the Sun decided to have a duvet day...it yawned, turned over and disappeared from sight under a thick quilt of grey cloud. With the wind tearing the last golden leaves from the trees, I tramped across the fields to investigate the skeleton which I have had stowed away over summer. Back in April I blogged a poor barn owl I had found lying dead in the farmyard. As I later found out, it had been brought back from the fields, and was terribly thin - it's been a bad year for them and we saw several sad corpses earlier this spring. I asked the farmer to keep the body for me and he stashed it in an old feed bin. Thinking it must be decomposed by now, I headed up the track...

...towards the farm. There are still cows out, which is a sign of how mild it has been. I found my owl - what was left of it. With a stick I gingerly prodded the mound of green sludge, rather puzzled as to why there seemed to be no skull. Ribs, yes, feet, there was the breast bone - but where was the fist sized globe I had been looking forward to retrieving? A closer look with tighly held breath (the atmosphere was - saline) revealed it lurking under a puddle of glop, much, much smaller than I had imagined from the original carcass. It was only a couple of inches in length and really quite nondescript. However, I fished it out, and a little more investigation uncovered the bottom part. I didn't take photos; not very salubrious.
I thought I'd head back the way I came, despite the two herds of bullocks and heifers I had to pass on my way in. I am sure that I overreact to cows, and they had been amiable the first time round. As I opened the gate, one of 'the girls' bellowed. Not a friendly call, either. Dithering by the fence I took my courage in my hands; after all, heifers don't attack people, it was just me being silly. Engrossed in negotiating the ankle deep mud, I didn't really take much notice of the increased war cries, until I glanced up and saw the blasted things scampering towards me - scampering - let me not mince words, they were charging. And they didn't want my autograph. Regardless of knowing that the worst thing to do is run, I calculated that if I didn't move pretty sharpish I might become one of those statistics - is it four people killed every year by cattle? I squelched as quickly as possible back through the mud and just got the gate shut as they careered up, blustering and snorting. We eyed each other with mutal loathing. This is the ugly face of Great Britain today - young ladies out of control, striking fear into local residents...

So, I had to add an extra mile and a half to my journey home and return the road way. Rewarded with a few blisters and the warming sight of old apples glowing against the grey skies like Chinese lanterns.


Mostly air and feathers, the hunter's costume is a merely a fearsome facade...

...how insignificant we all are under our fragile layers.

Owls and Crow

The owl pellet we found recently yielded the remains of what were probably a rat. Andy's Mum (who's good at these things), showed us how to wash the pellet in warm water to loosen it and tease out the boney treasures. (For a more scientific account of pellets, go here).

So what I had (unrealistically) thought were large teeth were actually vertebrae. There were bits of straw in there too, and with a farm near the find site, it was probably a barn owl. Sadly, there has a been a dead owl at this farm for several weeks. (No one seems bothered about moving it, although today we saw that it has been slung in a corner now, and moved off the shelf where it had been resting...) A while back, before it got too grotty, I took some photos of it for reference. I was amazed at how light it was, and the softness its feathers.


What a terrifying monster this must be to its prey, gliding silently through the velvet night, meathook talons ready to stab through soft, warm little bodies. There is nothing gentle about the barn owl - except it's feathers. A superbly designed killing machine and beautiful with it.

The owl from the book I am working on is an old softy though. He probably eats lentil soup and oatcakes. Nothing lethal about his claws...



On a less salubrious note, while we were out for our morning walk, we came across a dead crow...



As Andy nudged it with his foot, the head squirmed. It was like that moment from 'Carrie' , when the hand suddenly appears from the grave. Morbidly fascinated, we glimpsed shiny fat black bodies wriggling about in a head cavity, causing the skin to writhe and squirm. They soon vanished iinto the refuge of the rotting skull, and all was still again. Despite poking it with a stick, turning it over and shaking it, no more insect life appeared. We are the Hopeless Naturalists, and we couldn't decide whether it was a spider or carrion beetles. It was a delicously gruesome moment though!