Sta.sh
...and found two, very, very dead, mummified barn owls. Apparently, the owners/estate agents had found people had been squatting in the buildings and so had decided the best course of action was to board up all the doors and windows. The poor wee owls had died of dehydration and starvation, one was a slightly older corpse than the other and most of his/her feathers were gone due to moth and maggot damage, but the other still had most of his/her wing feathers, but both owls were equally mummified. They didn't have any tags and markers on them, so they were totally wild birds, not monitored by any of the bird trust charities we have in the UK. Poor little sods - you could see where they had been scratching and scrabbling at the boards over the windows. The room itself is quite claustrophobic with a low ceiling and the floor was ankle deep with rubbish - it was a horrible, dank, dark place for such beautiful creatures to die. It was very sad sight, and to think their deaths could have been prevented with a bit of thought - apparently, any building or restoration work on the house is potentially restricted due to the presence of barn owls and bats (something we won't have to worry about now -_-) - so you would have thought that people would check to make sure there weren't any birds trapped inside before they clapped boards over it all.
So anyway! I took pictures of their bodies and where we found them (I am not posting them up, as they are for recording purposes only, and simply for the fact that the floor they were on was DISGUSTING...my first words when I entered the building were "Oh shit." - a mixture of 40+ years neglect, shite and rubbish left by squatters, gutted furniture, and getting on for 1 and 1/2 feet of pigeon, rat, mouse and moth shit) in case I get asked for evidence that I didn't catch or buy them illegally (VERY VERY IMPORTANT! The rules in the UK regarding wildlife protection and wildlife crime are pretty strict, and the entire responsibility for proving that they were found dead, and weren't illegally caught or bought, is with the holder...that being me.). I'll be taking photos throughout the project though, from initial de-bugging, to cleaning and mounting, as I'm going to clean them up and mount them up as fully articulated skeletons... So for now I've now bagged them up and have now sprayed them liberally with insecticide. I'll leave them like that for now, until after Christmas. Let's face it, they aren't really going anywhere...
Also at the farm, my dad (with his usual knack for finding death and decay) found a poachers (or gamekeepers) pit - basically a hole or hollow in the ground (in this case an old, mossed over sheep dip) where poachers throw the heads and legs of deer and other animals they shoot or catch, basically so that the carcass is easier to carry home. The land of the steading is criss-crossed all over with deer tracks, so they obviously frequent the area. In the pit were two deer faces and a load of legs, they were off a couple of Roe Deer...young Roe Deer, maybe only a year or so old, as one of them had the buds of antlers, but only about an inch or so long. There were some maggots present so, if the weather stays mild, it won't take long for the flesh to rot off. I'll head back in a few weeks and check them again. Hopefully I'll have a couple of deer skulls and some legs to take home and clean.
So there we are, I don't think I did too badly out of the day at all! I'm glad we found the pair of owls and they weren't just chucked out when the house gets cleared out, as many people would do. Cleaning them up, reassembling them and keeping them out in the open from now on - showing them respect in death, is the least I can do. I'm going to keep them together too, perch them on the same branch. And as for the deer heads, we'll see how that goes too. Made my Christmas anyway!
Any suggestions for names for the wee owls?
Delighted 
