In the last week we have been helping Martyn with darting, outside our skull duties. He uses an air-pressured rifle to shoot the deer with darts, then once they have been knocked-out he marks them with ear flashes and cattle collars and then takes various morphometric measurements. It has been fun to help out and he even taught us how to use the gun. Becca is a dead-eyed shot, possible due to her Robin Hood heritage, hitting the bull from 15, 20 and 25 metres. It has been good fun to help out with work outside the skull measurements and see how work on large mammals is carried out. Marking deer is very different from meerkat captures or babbler ringing. We are also now able to ID at least a few deer: the one’s we helped mark!

We had a wander over to Harris, and on our way we spotted a peculiar South African rock formation. Right in the middle of Rum there is a group of mountains that look like Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain and Lions Head!! All together and even with a long low hill that resembles Signal Hill, I felt very home sick for the Mother City!

We have a new biggest skull: Samson, at 450ml and from some preliminary plotting of the data we have found, not very surprisingly, that skull length appears to be positively correlated with cranial volume. But there is a fairly large amount of variation, with some animals having very big volumes to their lengths. In addition, from looking at the data as we have been entering it in, individuals who are related seem to have a fairly similar volume: length ratio. We haven’t looked into this statistically but it’s just some anecdotal observation. So hopefully there may be some heritability, which Corina will hopefully be able to show (if it’s there).

On our walk down into the village this morning we also heard our first cuckoos of the year, so spring has arrived in Rum.

I have added a few pics from our wanderings, our office view and some long exposures that I have taken from the beach at Kilmory!

It’s been another fun week on Rum. The weather has provided us with glorious sunshine, rainbows and horizontal rain (all on one day). The skull measuring is going on at pace, we have made around 850 measurements so far and might even be finished earlier than we expected. At the moment we are measuring some of the stag skulls. These still have their antlers attached and are all stored at the top of the laundry on large beam across the ceiling. Getting these down involves Cirque de Solei like skills of balancing on a trestle table while trying to disentangle these huge antlered skulls. But it is going well and our current record for skull cranial capacity is 425ml for a stag called Cafuffel.

We have also been out with Martyn on an autopsy of a recently dead deer. This was pretty interesting, as we got to see what long-term data is collected: muscle tissue, fur, the liver is weighed etc. We also got to see where our skulls come from and how they are taken from the carcass. But I now feel very sorry for the deer, as they are full of parasites. We got to count the number of nasal maggots, liver flukes and lung worm. Fortunately this deer didn’t have any lung worm, a small mercy. But on our way to the autopsy we passed a deer that didn’t look to good. We mentioned this to Martyn on the way to the already dead deer and he said he would have a look on the way back. But when we got back this deer had already dropped dead. This was pretty sad but I suppose that means there is more food for surviving deer.

I forgot to attach some links to the researchers that we are working for:

http://pemberton.bio.ed.ac.uk/

http://corinalogan.com/

http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/directory/tim-clutton-brock

Well I have also been taking some night time photos, attached below.

We have arrived on Rum and are now busy measuring deer skulls with an amazing view out over grazing herds of deer with Skye in the background. The journey up to the Inner Hebrides was long but enjoyable. The trip to Edinburgh was accompanied by a steady increase in cloud and mistiness as we sped north. Once in Edinburgh we were treated to some Scottish rain, and the company of Ian Stevenson and Matt Bell. Matt had arranged for me to give a talk to some of the Zoology department at the university, after which I got to meet Per Smiseth and see the burying beetle lab. After a night of burgers and local beer and gin we took a breath-taking train ride to Mallaig, the scenery was truly majestic and topped off by the Glenfinnan Bridge (the one from Harry Potter). Once in the quiet fishing town of Mallaig we treated ourselves to some local fish and chips before an early night.

The ferry to Rum allowed us to get a great view of Eigg and Skye as Mallaig drifted into the distance and Rum loomed ever larger. After leaving the ferry we made the bumpy and slow trip from Kinloch to Kilmory, with Becca unfortunately crammed into the back of the Landrover. Since then we have pretty much been working most of the time. We were able to get some sound advice from Josephine Pemberton, along with various stories from the Red Deer Project’s 40 year history. The work has been going well, getting large male skulls with huge antlers down from beams across the ceiling aside. Pouring glass beads into potentially 1000 deer skulls may sound like something that a certain class of sinners is doomed to do for eternity in one of the levels of hell, but accompanied by ‘Stuff you missed in history class’ podcasts and one of the world’s best views it seems to be rather pleasant. The long-term research manager/field assistant Martyn is great company at night and his cooking has improved since his time at the KMP. I’ve posted some pictures: one of me and the skull of Aristotle, one of the showing that the bothy lies at the end of the rainbow, another of our view as we walk to breakfast, and then some from our trip to the beach (Samhnan Insir) on our first sunny day (and thus our first day off). It’s cold at night but the Island is so beautiful that we don’t care.