And Now An Overdue Update

I'm sorry.

I did not update when I meant to last week and then I put it off, and off and off.......and now here we are one  week later!

Woops!

But now I'll let you know what had been going on! I started dissecting last week and did the five pellets I collected during the full moon 2 weekends ago. I first weighed each one to see what the difference was. What was interesting, but expected, was that the weights actually went down each day. The first pellet was 20g and the last one was 2g.

Not the same!

So clearly the diet was affected by the lunar cycle. So then I took all my stuff with me in my handy dandy IKEA bag in one hand and my toaster over in the other and went in to set up my work space. Originally I was going to be back in one of the workshops, but Tom decided to put me in the office with two other land people who I think are saints for putting up with me in their office smelling it up. 

But back to the research

Owl pellets are full of digestive juices and other things that could be in the owls digestive track so disinfecting them is a must, even though I'm wearing gloves to tear them apart. That's where my toaster oven comes in! I found that one of the best ways to disinfect the pellets is to bake them so I will be baking mine at 350 degrees F for 40-45 min. Before I put them in, I measured their length and width at the widest part. I then wrapped them in foil and put them in.  

Toaster ovens smell the first time you use them!

Plus I was baking owl puke, so the smell was not awesome, but it did go away (or at least I couldn't smell it anymore) and wasn't as bad. When the 40-45 min was up, I used my cute little pair of tongs and took them out to cool. Then?

Time to identify some bones!

With my handy charts next to me, I started to take the pellets apart and identify the bones. In the first pellet, there were 3 crayfish, a mole, a shrew and a vole. Well, there were pieces of those animals. There however was no skulls. The next pellet was about the same. A few crayfish and a shrew, but no skulls. 

A skull and some fun came the next day

Wednesday I came back to finish the small pellets. I figured it wouldn't be much since these pellets were smaller and only weighed between 2-8 oz. 

Boy was I wrong!

In the first pellet I took apart,  found a bird. See:

I tried to put it together the best I could. There were 4 of the 6 bones still together for the legs, a spine, a pelvis and either some wing bones or ribs, I wasn't 100% sure. And as for the big one at the top? I honestly don't know. It could be part of the beak, it did line up with it, but I'm not sure. 

The next pellet had my first skull

This is the skull of a shrew. This is the only skull I found in all 5 pellets so I was pretty excited. So I took a lot of pictures:

(I like how well you can see the teeth in this one)

Shrews and crayfish were found in every pellet in some way, shape or form so I'm thinking these are the main pieces to the barred owl's diet. At least this barred owl that is!

So that's what you've missed.

My dad, my mom and I went out tonight to try and find another roost but were not successful (unless me getting 3 mosquito bites equals success). The new moon is this week, so I'll be collecting from my barred owl friend for sure this week, but if I can find another roost that would be cool to look at this week too! Hopefully I'll get better at updating this week!

Sincerely, 

Owl Girl