Bird skull

I feel I ought to apologise for the uncompromising nature of this shot, but this bird skull has been fascinating me.  K brought it home from one of her Hazel-walks about two weeks ago.  She was expecting it to be from a bird of prey.  The rest of the skeleton had got both muddied and muddled so it was hard to tell.  However, it looks to me like it's a pigeon's.  It's extremely light - about the same weight as a falling oak leaf - and that reminded me of something I'd heard about birds having pneumatic bones.  So of course I then had to go and read up on that. 

As many of you will know, basically, birds' bones are not solid like ours, being structured more like the wings of an early 20th century bi-plane.  (See here if you want to dig further.)  And the two other things that struck me about this particular skull is a) how big the eye sockets are (especially in comparison to the brain cavity - though we probably all knew about pigeons' brains) and b) how long the beak is.  Who'da thought, eh?

So finally blipping it has been the - er - highlight of my day.  Thank you all for being so very kind to yesterday's - and happy Hallowe'en  xx