It was a cold winter\u2019s morning, and we wrapped up warm to go for a walk in the woods behind our house. The ground was frosty and crunched under our feet, and although it was chilly the sun was casting golden beams of light across our path. We always find a lot of amazing wildlife in the woods \u2013 I\u2019ve seen deer and squirrels there and I\u2019ve even spotted a kingfisher down by the brook. But today I decided to explore high up on the slopes, a place I hadn\u2019t been before.<\/p>\n
My eyes scanned the leaf litter and something caught my eye. At first glance I thought it was just a pile of broken stones, but then I looked closer and saw it was something much more exciting \u2013 it was an animal skull. I wasn\u2019t sure what type, as some of it had decomposed. My parents agreed that I could take it home for identification. I wanted to find out what animal it was.<\/p>\n
The \u2018cabinet of curiosities\u2019 in Jasmine\u2019s home. Photograph: Family handout<\/p>\n
I suspected it was an adult fox skull because it had a long, slender snout, and I knew their skulls are about 14cm long, and mine measured exactly that. It also had 42 teeth which is the amount of teeth for an adult fox, and there were incisors that meant it must be able to eat meat. I also found out foxes are very common in English cities and Bristol has the third largest population of urban foxes in the UK. There are about 16 foxes per square kilometre in Bristol compared to the countryside where there are only two per square kilometre.<\/p>\n
Now the skull lies downstairs in our \u201ccabinet of curiosities\u201d along with feathers and fossils that I\u2019ve collected with my sister.
Jasmine, nine<\/p>\n
Read today\u2019s other YCD, by Sam, 12: \u2018My favourite walk to my favourite tree<\/a>\u2019
The Young Country Diary submission form<\/a> will reopen on Wednesday 1 April for spring entries <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a cold winter\u2019s morning, and we wrapped up warm to go for a walk in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-315336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}