Barn Owl Pellets

My mum was out walking the dogs the other evening when a Barn Owl flew over her head. She noted where it landed and came home to tell me.

The next day we went out and searched around the bottom of the tree, realising that this must be a regular roost as the ground surrounding the tree was littered with owl pellets in varying stages of decomposition.

On closer inspection the grass and fallen logs close to the tree were scattered with tens of skulls and bones from previous pellets.

It’s half term and most of the week it has been raining heavily so dissecting these pellets was an interesting thing to do

The pellets contained complete skulls and a few broken ones, as well as hundreds of tiny bones.

The pellets then went to Linda and Bob who are much better at identifying bones than me.

The results were:

The 38 skulls and upper palate were

a) Common Shrew 1

b) Pygmy Shrew 1

c) Rat 0

d) Wood Mouse 4

e) Field Vole 32

And the 53 half lower jaws were

a) Common Shrew 1

b) Pygmy Shrew 1

c) Rat 1

d) Wood Mouse 4

e) Field Vole 46

Even with the wet weather, this barn owls seems to be eating well

One thing I noticed was the different length in teeth. Rodents, like wood mice and voles  have a single pair of growing incisors in both the upper and lower jaw that must be kept short by gnawing. Their incisors are used for a range of functions such as bitting through wood, the skin of fruit and nuts, as well as small insects.

Rodents don’t have canine teeth like many other mammals, they have a diastema (large gap) between their incisors and premolars. The gap allows them to move their food from their cheeks for continuous eating.

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