Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Saturday 10 May 2008

The stench of death!

It's a strange thing, but aside from very obvious road-kill corpses I come across very few dead animals and birds when out and about (relative to their abundance in life). This is especially true of the larger mammals. On arriving at Ketton yesterday morning though, a disturbingly familiar smell hit my nostrils. Death. Just like the rotting Blackbird I cleared out of our guttering a couple of years ago, only bigger. You know the smell.
Right at the entrance to the reserve, completely exposed, was a recently dead Muntjac (or at least I think it's a Muntjac). When I say recently dead, I'm guessing 2 - 3 days. With the recent heat, the smell of decomposition and the maggot ridden nasal passages were the only lively things about this deer.
The left hidleg was snapped just above the hoof with exposed bone, so I'm guessing that it must have been severly hampered to the point where it probably just laid down and starved to death.
Any dipterists or coleopterists out there would have a field day with this one!

Not very well.

Knackered leg.

Maggot heaven.

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