An Owl-Tastic Adventure

Hi there everyone! 

My name is Lindsay and I'm the Owl Girl. This summer I will be performing research in fulfillment of my Bachelors in Biology degree I will graduate with next May! So I thought it might be a fun adventure to create a blog about all of this nonsense I call research.

So! You may be wondering, what are you researching?

Well I'm glad you asked. :) My official title is:

"The Correlation between the the diet of Owls (Order Strigiformes) and the Lunar Cycle at the Chippewa Nature Center."

But in normal terms, basically I want to see if an owls diet is affected by the amount of moon light available at night to hunt by. Sounds kind of interesting huh? In order to do this I am going to collect the pellets produced by the owls, dissect them and then compare the contents during certain parts of the lunar cycle.
BEFORE I MOVE ON I want to explain what an owl pellet is. Most people think, "Oh....like poop right?" NOOOO!!!! I don't know how many times I've had to explain this but an owl pellet is one that is regurgitated by the owl each evening. Owls swallow their prey whole which means they eat the bones and fur of the mice, voles, shrews, etc. However, bones and fur cannot be digested so the digestive system of the owls picks off the meat and then compacts the bones and fur and other un-digestible things into a pellet and then the owl throws it up each evening before it goes and hunts again. They look something like this:

Not very pretty but hey! It's basically owl puke so what do you expect?! After I collect the pellets I am going to sterilize them in my handy dandy toaster oven (since who knows what could be on them!) and then pick them apart, or dissect them if you're a scientist, and identity what species the bones belong to. 

I thought you were working with the lunar cycle?

Well yes I am! So the dates I collect the pellets are very specific. Each part of the lunar cycle will have 5 pellets associated with it for each species I collect from: both days before the moon, the day of and both days after the moon. My preliminary studies show that IN THEORY the diet of the owls may not be as good during the full moon because the prey don't come out at night because they can be seen so easily. 

So,

I'm going to collect during the full moon and the new moon times of the month so that I get results from both ends of the spectrum. I also am going to keep record of how bright it is during the full moon since cloud cover might affect my results. 

What species are you going to be working with?

In theory, 3:

The Great Horned Owl

The Barred Owl

The Eastern Screech Owl

(They're the cute little things!)

All of these species have been found and seen in the Chippewa Nature Center where I am conducting my research, so in theory I will be working with all of them but we'll see how that goes. 

So I think that's really it for now!

I really don't have much else to say. This is just the overview of my project. I plan on updating this blog every time I have something new to say, which may be every day or every few days. We'll just have to see how it all goes! So stay tuned for an exciting summer full of research!

Sincerely,

Owl Girl