Here is our first mystery skull!
We love finding skulls. We found this one in a pine plantation - it was probably the prey of a hawk. The plantation was about 200 yards from a river-bank. Any idea what kind of animal this is from? You can find out here. Or see a living example at WinterWoman’s blog.
We’ve had great luck finding skulls in pine plantations.
We look for plantations where the trees are about eight feet tall. Hawks bring their prey there to eat, and the heads, after being picked over, are droppoed to the ground and soon the skin rots away to leave a gleaming white specimen.
Posted on March 22nd, 2009 by Kenton Whitman
Filed under: Skulls
Cool skull! I love finding skulls, too - I’ve never come across a muskrat skull. As far as rodents go, I’ve got a gray squirrel from here in Missouri and a ground squirrel from out in California. Of course, the ultimate rodent skull would be a beaver - I found a road kill once but the head was crushed, that’s about as close as I’ve come. My biggest skulls are a horse and a feral boar - both virtually complete and squeaky clean!
regards-ted
Hello Ted,
Thanks for your comment! We’ve visited your blog — it’s quite an adventure journal! We are learning an immense amount — your latest post introduced us to trees that are very unfamiliar to us in Wisconsin. And the places you photograph and write about get us excited about adventures in other states.
We are the proud owners of a beaver skull — we’ll post it on one of our future ‘Mystery Skulls’ posts — but a feral boar? We’re immensely jealous =) And the ground squirrel must be quite an interesting one.
We’ve added you to our ‘Awesome Nature Blogs’ blogroll — we can’t wait to see where your adventures take you next!