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Writer's pictureSarah McCartney

bird skulls … a misidentification, a few new ones and lessons learnt

My blog post the other day ‘bird skulls from Samson’ led me to look closer at some of the skulls I’ve have for ages. I was given a few years ago and have always believed the little labels that went with them not thinking that they might be wrong.


How I never noticed this buzzard had been labelled jay I don’t know. I’m guessing over the years the labels got muddled. Anyway this is huge compared to the jay I’ve just unearthed and look at the hook on it. I apologise for mislabelled drawings and photos previous to this …


… and I now know that it is a jay skull in this piece from 2011.


Finding out more about bird skulls also made me panic about the ones I had buried in my garden. I realise now this is not the best method to get them clean. Though it seams like the easiest way you can easily loose bits especially with small ones. I got them all out the other day and was a bit disappointed to find I’d left some of them for far too long.

My beautiful jay broke in half, the razorbill lost the chunky black and white sheath that I really wanted to preserve and the tiny blue tit had disappeared mostly and I had to throw it away.


But they are still beautiful and I love them all. Especially the magnificent gannet.


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