The Lyons Share

Whilst poking around in the bottom of a quarry this afternoon I found a Badger's skull. I see a lot of these now, perhaps even more than those of Fox. I am always impressed by the sagittal crest on a Badger's skull. This 'crest' is where the jaw muscles attach to and is only present on animals with incredibly strong jaw muscles. It's also meant to get larger on older animals according to one website. What is strange about this particular skull is that the crest is hardly developed at all. What's more, the skull is bigger than any other Badger skull I have seen.

Here is a more typical Badger's skull (with jaw attached).

And here are the two together.

So what is going on here? If the sagittal crest does grow with age, that suggests there may be an environmental response involved, i.e., maybe Badgers which chew a lot, get more of a work out and therefore get bigger crests? Maybe this Badger lived on nothing but earth worms and marsh mallows and didn't develop a crest? Well it sure got big on whatever it was eating. I'd be interested to hear what people think. I am going to eat nothing but toffee pennies from Quality Street now and see if I can develop my own sagittal crest. Watch this space.

And to rule out dog, which have very different hind molars, here are the only teeth present.

I spend a lot of time outside and over the years I have found lots of skulls of many different species so I thought I would post a Halloween themed blog showing you some of the more interesting ones I have stumbled across  The first one is pretty obvious, probably a Hebridean ram. (they are ping-pong balls by the way). This one I found at Stedham earlier this year and there were still feathers nearby to clinch the ID, it's a Kestrel.

Another bird and this one's a Tawny Owl found dead at Woods Mill a few years ago. Note how big the eye cavities are.

Back to the mammals now and these should be fairly familiar. From the top to the bottom we have Rabbit, Badger, Fox and Roe Deer.

Today has been weird, so this post is going to reflect that I'm afraid. Lying in bed this morning I was awoken by a sound somewhere between R2D2 and Predator. I thought it was Jo's new alarm clock but when I then heard a sound like something from Jurassic Park, I flung the curtains open and saw a massive green parrot! It flew off before a photo could be taken but I saw it through my bins. It had a very short tail, a pale eye-ring and small but bright red patches in its wings. Bright green with perhaps some blue-green in there too. It was not a macaw. Last seen heading south towards Fiveways.

I had the afternoon off to finally get my back X-rayed and went a walk around Shoreham to psych myself up beforehand. I only saw two Ringed Plovers and a Whimbrel and was getting bored. I found some disturbed chalky ground in the middle of a playing field with Small Toadflax and Sharp-leaved Fluellen. Suddenly I noticed right at my feet a big mottled green lizard basking on a rock. The ridiculous concept of Sand Lizard sprung to mind that rapidly gave way to the more realistic alternative, I was looking at a naturalised Wall Lizard! Still, it's a new species for me! Sadly, it legged it before my fat hands could get my camera out of my bag.

Whilst receiving a dose of radiation to my spine 65 times greater than that of a typical chest X-ray, I suddenly thought that the internal workings of my own body are technically natural history and took a quick photo of the plate. So, for the first time ever (and hopefully the last), here is my lower spine and pelvis. Categorical proof that I am not an invertebrate. Maybe after only 12 weeks I'll get a diagnosis on Friday now!