Bonehouse and Birdhouse: Birds That Nest in Human Skulls

Guest post by Thomas J. Farrow

The English term ‘bonehouse’, referring to an ossuary or charnel where large quantities of exhumed skeletal remains are stacked and displayed, derives from the Anglo-Saxon ‘beinhaus’. In its original use, this word referred to the human body rather than any structure as the house of bones. With the bones of the living inhabiting bodies and the bones of the dead inhabiting charnel houses, distinctions between life and death remain clear and accommodated. However, the emergence of animal life within the bones of the dead offers one further twist, repurposing bones as houses in and of themselves.

Reports of birds nesting in human skulls were surprisingly common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, attracting the attention of Victorian ornithologists and curiosity-seekers alike. Numerous reports survive through popular books and magazines of the period, including wrens nesting in a skull left outside to whiten by an anatomy student (Blanchan 1907), as well as one uncovered during building works at Hockwold Hall, Norfolk, during the 1870s (Chilvers 1877). Following its discovery, the Hockwold skull was hung from a nail on a potting shed wall by a local man, who was later surprised to find that a wren seen flying in and out of it had laid four or five eggs within.

Also in Norfolk, earlier in the century, birds were found nesting in the exposed skeletal remains of a local murderer. Following execution, the body was left to rot in a gibbet suspended outside the village of Wereham, serving as a grizzly warning to others who might threaten local lives. Around five years later, in 1810 or thereabouts, a child climbed the scaffold and discovered several blue-tits living within the skull (Stevenson 1876).

Though the Wereham gibbet is no longer extant, the surviving Rye gibbet shows how a skull would be retained. (Postcard. Author’s collection.)

Further accounts pepper books both historic and recent. When a Saxon cemetery was excavated at Saffron Walden during the 1870s, a Redstart raised four children in the skull of an exposed skeleton (Travis 1876). More recently, in an expedition to Cape Clear Island, Ireland, the ornithologist Ronald M. Lockley discovered a robin’s nest inside a skull within a ruined chapel, which had presumably tumbled from an old stone grave within the walls (Lockley 1983).

FIG 2: Illustration of a bird’s nest in a human skull, c.1906.

Skulls do not form the only morbid homes of nesting birds, with the Chinese Hoopoe, or coffin-bird, so named on account of its habit of nesting in caskets which were frequently left above-ground in 19th century China. Furthermore, the Arctic-dwelling Snow Bunting has been rumoured to seek shelter in the chest cavities of those unfortunate enough to die on the tundra (Dixon 1902). While nooks and crannies in modern cemeteries also provide helpful shelter in mortuary environments (Smith/Minor 2019), these nesting sites are not driven by any macabre mechanism. Rather, they express the versatile ability of birds to seek shelter wherever it might be conveniently found.

Birds nesting in locations as mundane as flowerpots and old boots (Kearton 1895), through to desiccated animal carcasses, including those of other birds (Armstrong 1955), demonstrate the indifferent resourcefulness of our feathered friends. It is therefore unsurprising that when skulls of the dead have been left exposed to the elements, they have occasionally provided shelter in much the same way as any other convenient object might. As charnels and ossuaries have historically accommodated large quantities of such remains, from time to time they have offered several such convenient homes for nesting birds.
Within England, two charnel collections remain extant. The first of these, at St. Leonard’s Church in Hythe, Kent, houses hundreds of skulls including one which contains a bird’s nest. The nest is rumoured to have been built in the mid-20th century after the church’s windows were shattered by a bomb which fell nearby in the Second World War, allowing birds to enter the structure (Caroline 2015).

FIG 3: The bird’s nest skull in St. Leonard’s, Hythe.

England’s second accessible charnel collection is located in the crypt of Holy Trinity Church in Rothwell, Northamptonshire. Newspapers in 1912 reported the discovery a nest in a skull there, which was believed to have been made by a bird who snuck into the crypt through a hole in a ventilator (Northampton Mercury 12.7.12). However, a lack of references in more recent sources suggest that the nest has not survived to the present day.
In Austria, the ossuary of Filialkirche St. Michael in der Wachau contains the remains of local people as well as soldiers who died during the 1805 Battle of Dürenstein (Engelbrecht). Several skulls bear bullet holes attesting death by conflict, while one with a large portion missing from its vault is displayed side-on to reveal the bird’s nest that it contains.

FIG 4: Nest skull at the Filialkirche St. Michael in der Wachau.

Further examples exist in the Breton region of North-Western France, where ossuaries were common until hygienic and cultural changes in the 19th and 20th centuries led to most of them being emptied. The ossuary of l’Église Saint-Grégoire in Lanrivain is one where bones still remain, with one skull there accommodating a nest.

FIG 5: Nest skull in Lanrivain Ossuary, Brittany.

A further example with a difference can be found in the ossuary of l’Église Saint-Fiacre. Within Breton ossuary practices, skulls were frequently retained separately from other remains in biographically inscribed boxes which recorded details of the deceased such as names and dates alongside invocations of prayer (Coughlin 2016). Boxes possessed viewing apertures which exposed the remains, as well as pitched roofs which led to 19th century travellers describing them as resembling dog kennels. However, one at Saint-Fiacre is decidedly distant from these canine comparisons, having been adopted and transformed into the uncanniest of birdhouses.

Ossuary in Saint-Fiacre. Source: Photos 2 Brehiz.

Birds are not the only animals to have found happy homes among charnel remains. In her book ‘A Tour of the Bones’, Denise Inge noted a mouse living in the ossuary of Hallstatt, Austria. More recently, rat bones in the ossuary of Gdańsk, Poland, have been used to shed new light on the dispersal of plague in medieval Europe (Morozova et al 2020). Plants as well as animals have their own established charnel histories too, with moss removed from human skulls finding historic employment within folk medicine as a cure for conditions of the head such as seizures and nosebleeds (Gerard 1636).

Fig 7: Medical moss on a human skull in the late 17th century.

While cemeteries have attracted increased attention in recent times as urban green spaces which accommodate and facilitate nature within settlements (Quinton/Duinker 2018), the study of charnel houses as ecosystems remains a further promising project which is yet to be conducted.

As most instances of birds nesting in ossuary skulls which have been described here were discovered accidentally during the course of broader research, it is inevitable that the present list remains incomplete. It is hoped that by bringing such examples together in one place, this strange phenomenon might receive recognition for the curiosity that it is, and that more instances might be noticed and added to the list. While it is widely seen that life often finds compelling ways to perpetuate among environments of the dead, nesting birds in ossuary skulls provide a particularly uncanny example – from bodies as the houses of bones, to bones as the houses of bodies.

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Thomas J. Farrow (mailTwitter) holds an MA in the Archaeology of Death and Memory from the University of Chester, UK. A previous article on the history of charnelling in England may be found here (Farrow 2020), while a paper addressing folk medical and magical uses of skull moss and ossuary remains is forthcoming in the Spring 2021 issue of The Enquiring Eye

Links, Curiosities & Mixed Wonders – 15

  • Cogito, ergo… memento mori“: this Descartes plaster bust incorporates a skull and detachable skull cap. It’s part of the collection of anatomical plasters of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and it was sculpted in 1913 by Paul Richer, professor of artistic anatomy born in Chartres. The real skull of Descartes has a rather peculiar story, which I wrote about years ago in this post (Italian only).
  • A jarring account of a condition which you probably haven’t heard of: aphantasia is the inability of imagining and visualizing objects, situations, persons or feelings with the “mind’s eye”. The article is in Italian, but there’s also an English Wiki page.
  • 15th Century: reliquaries containing the Holy Virgin’s milk are quite common. But Saint Bernardino is not buying it, and goes into a enjoyable tirade:
    Was the Virgin Mary a dairy cow, that she left behind her milk just like beasts let themselves get milked? I myself hold this opinion, that she had no more and no less milk than what fitted inside that blessed Jesus Christ’s little mouth.

  • In 1973 three women and five men feigned hallucinations to find out if psychiatrists would realize that they were actually mentally healthy. The result: they were admitted in 12 different hospitals. This is how the pioneering Rosenhan experiment shook the foundations of psychiatric practice.
  • Can’t find a present for your grandma? Ronit Baranga‘s tea sets may well be the perfect gift.

  • David Nebreda, born in 1952, was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 19. Instead of going on medication, he retired as a hermit in a two-room apartment, without much contact with the outside world, practicing sexual abstinence and fasting for long periods of time. His only weapon to fight his demons is a camera: his self-portraits undoubtedly represent some kind of mental hell — but also a slash of light at the end of this abyss; they almost look like they capture an unfolding catharsis, and despite their extreme and disturbing nature, they seem to celebrate a true victory over the flesh. Nebreda takes his own pain back, and trascends it through art. You can see some of his photographs here and here.
  • The femme fatale, dressed in glamourous clothes and diabolically lethal, is a literary and cinematographic myth: in reality, female killers succeed in becoming invisible exactly by playing on cultural assumptions and keeping a low and sober profile.
  • Speaking of the female figure in the collective unconscious, there is a sci-fi cliché which is rarely addressed: women in test tubes. Does the obsessive recurrence of this image point to the objectification of the feminine, to a certain fetishism, to an unconscious male desire to constrict, seclude and dominate women? That’s a reasonable suspicion when you browse the hundred-something examples harvested on Sci-Fi Women in Tubes. (Thanks, Mauro!)

  • I have always maintained that fungi and molds are superior beings. For instance the slimy organisms in the pictures above, called Stemonitis fusca, almost seem to defy gravity. My first article for the magazine Illustrati, years ago, was  dedicated to the incredible Cordyceps unilateralis, a parasite which is able to control the mind and body of its host. And I have recently stumbled upon a photograph that shows what happens when a Cordyceps implants itself within the body of a tarantula. Never mind Cthulhu! Mushrooms, folks! Mushrooms are the real Lords of the Universe! Plus, they taste good on a pizza!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzSirMY0rWg

  • The latest entry in the list of candidates for my Museum of Failure is Adelir Antônio de Carli from Brazil, also known as Padre Baloeiro (“balloon priest”). Carli wished to raise funds to build a chapel for truckers in Paranaguá; so, as a publicity stunt, on April 20, 2008, he tied a chair to 1000 helium-filled balloons and took off before journalists and a curious crowd. After reaching an altitude of 6,000 metres (19,700 ft), he disappeared in the clouds.
    A month and a half passed before the lower part of his body was found some 100 km off the coast.

  • La passionata is a French song covered by Guy Marchand which enjoyed great success in 1966. And it proves two surprising truths: 1- Latin summer hits were already a thing; 2- they caused personality disorders, as they still do today. (Thanks, Gigio!)

  • Two neuroscientists build some sort of helmet which excites the temporal lobes of the person wearing it, with the intent of studying the effects of a light magnetic stimulation on creativity.  And test subjects start seeing angels, dead relatives, and talking to God. Is this a discovery that will explain mystical exstasy, paranormal experiences, the very meaning of the sacred? Will this allow communication with an invisible reality? Neither of the two, because the truth is a bit disappointing: in all attempts to replicate the experiment, no peculiar effects were detected. But it’s still a good idea for a novel. Here’s the God helmet Wiki page.
  • California Institute of Abnormalarts is a North Hollywood sideshow-themed nightclub featuring burlesque shows, underground musical groups, freak shows and film screenings. But if you’re afraid of clowns, you might want to steer clear of the place: one if its most famous attractions is the embalmed body of Achile Chatouilleu, a clown who asked to be buried in his stage costume and makeup.
    Sure enough, he seems a bit too well-preserved for a man who allegedly died in 1912 (wouldn’t it happen to be a sideshow gaff?). Anyways, the effect is quite unsettling and grotesque…

  • I shall leave you with a picture entitled The Crossing, taken by nature photographer Ryan Peruniak. All of his works are amazing, as you can see if you head out to his official website, but I find this photograph strikingly poetic.
    Here is his recollection of that moment:
    Early April in the Rocky Mountains, the majestic peaks are still snow-covered while the lower elevations, including the lakes and rivers have melted out. I was walking along the riverbank when I saw a dark form lying on the bottom of the river. My first thought was a deer had fallen through the ice so I wandered over to investigate…and that’s when I saw the long tail. It took me a few moments to comprehend what I was looking at…a full grown cougar lying peacefully on the riverbed, the victim of thin ice.