Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.
30th November 2009 2009
Each year, during the Easter holiday, members of the Geography department at Ackworth
School take a group of students to the Isle of Arran, where they carry out fieldwork.
This year, one of my colleagues brought back three bones which she had found in a
rock-
I had suspected that the bones belonged to a seal but it was only recently that I got around to checking this. By searching the internet, I managed to find and download a document produced by the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. I have not identified the species but have found that two of the bones are the shoulder blade and pelvic bone of a seal.
It is some years since I was last on Arran but I remember cycling along the coast and seeing the heads of seals sticking up above the surface of the sea, gazing around curiously.
At Ackworth, a little owl continues to roost in an oak tree near the sports hall. I walk around the grounds regularly at lunchtimes and have had some clear views of the owl. There has been a sharp breeze on some days and the owl has stood on the lee side of the trunk and of a thick broken branch.
Also, the short winter days mean that I now cycle to and from work in the dark. In recent days, I have heard the calls of tawny owls coming from woods on the outskirts of Hemsworth. We do not usually hear tawny owls in the middle of Hemsworth but I know that they venture in because I have found a large pellet in a cavity on the front of our house.