Bird Skulls
By Andrew (06/10/13 19:31:47)
Related animals: Owl, Parakeet

Interspecies Collaboration Week 3

I have a weird fascination with skulls. None specific; just skeleton heads. I think their structure and material is so fascinating. How the bone is formed to fit the eyes and mouth. I also like how each one is different; no to skulls are exact so each one if unique. A few months ago I was walking home from class and at the bottom of my stairs was a skeleton of a bird. The only piece of it intact was the skull. It was a very small bird because the skull was about the size of a grape but still so detailed and intricate. I was so excited for my findings that I disregarded the whole wild animals disease thing. I picked up the skull and brought it into the house. I cleaned it and examined it to figure out what kind of bird this skull was from. After researching online and comparing pictures for a while I finally came to the conclusion that it was a parakeet, which most likely meant it was someone’s former pet. So my next question was, how did it get to the bottom of our stairs with only tiny hints of feathers on the bone? I had no idea at first so I asked my housemates what they thought. They said that since I found it in the early morning it must have been dropped by something over night. It was impossible to tell for sure how the birds skeleton got there but we came to three conclusions:

1) The parakeet got out of its cage at it’s owners house and after it’s escape, ran into a predator owl who was searching for a meal in the night. The owl finished the edible parts of the bird then just happened to drop it close to our doorstep.
2) The owner was starved so she killed the bird and took all of its feathers and organs off to cook and eat them. Then the owner disposed of the bones by throwing them over the fence.
3) The parakeet was sitting on the window sill of it’s owners bedroom soaking in the rays of the sun when Garfield the Trigo road cat grabbed it and ate everything but the bone off of its body.

After I cleaned it the skull of the parakeet I was forced to put it outside because my roommates were too grossed out by it. I place a glass cup over it so it wouldn’t get blown off the balcony or taken by any other animal. The next day I came back to clean the skull even more and it was gone. I looked over the railing of the balcony and a dog was sitting playing with it on the sidewalk floor. The skull was in pieces and now the mystery of the appearing skull will never be solved. I am happy that I found out the species of the bird though.



Parakeet Skull Owl skull


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