A Visit with a Naturalist--Part Two

For most of the winter during my Second Looks, I found bones in the "wild" part of our yard. I became quite fascinated with them and wondered what they were and how they ended up where they were. Ward and I visited with a naturalist and found answers to some of our questions. I reported about the mammal part of that discussion in A Visit with a Naturalist--Part One.

I've been meaning to do the followup post of our visit for a couple of months now, and it looks like today is the day. This time I will focus on birds. More specifically, on parts of a crow that were found over several weeks. However, the problem with waiting for a couple of months after our visit, is that I forgot almost everything the naturalist told us. I do remember the bones were pretty easy to identify as coming from a bird because they were so lightweight. Also, the feathers found near some of the bones suggested that we had found parts of a crow. After that, it's all fuzzy in my head.

So today, I got out the bird bones we had collected and tried to figure them out. After a lot of Googling and help from Ward, I thought I had deduced what were the different parts of the crow. However, after more study, I realized that I had the front and back of the bird mixed up. Back to the drawing board. After more work, I think I have a pretty good idea of what we have. (And we only had two parts leftover.) Below you will see "our crow".

This drawing from the Enchanted Learning Company is what we ultimately used to identify the skeletal parts.

Here are the bones in their approximate positions.

Here is one of the wing feathers. The naturalist said that you could tell that by its shape. One side is much wider that the other making it look like an airplane wing. I found that really interesting.

Here are our leftover parts. They were a little darker than the others, so we thought that maybe they came from another bird/critter.

But Wait, There's More:

I think this is the crow's skull. However, at that time I wasn't collecting bones. I couldn't find it when I looked for it later.

A Visit with the Naturalist--Part One

or What's this bone?

This winter while doing Second Looks, I found several bones in the lower part of my yard. They held a great fascination for me as I tried to guess what animal they came from. Recently I visited with Lynn, a naturalist at a local park, to see if she could give me any clues about what I was finding. While much of what she told me may be old hat to the biologists and naturalists out there, I found it all very interesting.

Since I've been finding mostly jaw bones (mandibles), she focused on teeth. Apparently herbivores have a space between their front incisors and their back grinding teeth, and omnivores and carnivores have a continuous set of teeth from front to back. There are variatons on this theme, but it holds true in most all cases. Next, she looked at size and shape, and then considered where the bone was found. With all of these considerations, Lynn then gave me her best guess as to what I had.

Below I've tried to represent what I learned about my collection. The information is not absolute, so kids, don't use this a reference for your school report. :)

 

We were all sure that this belonged to a deer.

The striations on this bone probably came from mice chewing on it to get calcium.

Notice the eye sockets are large and to the side. This is typical of a prey animal that must always be on the lookout.

This is the same skull as above turned over.

The large front gnawing teeth are missing.

Note the relative sizes of the deer, raccoon, young groundhog, and squirrel bones.

There, wasn't that interesting? (if you're into this kind of thing.)