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Dissecting owl pellets: a window into nocturnal hunters' feeding patterns [1]
['Jennifer Sandlin']
Date: 2025-07-29
I'm fascinated by owl pellets, which contain various parts of an owl's prey that they cannot digest, including fur, feathers, teeth, bones, and more. Since owls don't have teeth and can't chew their food, they swallow their prey whole. And unlike other raptors that have an organ called a "crop," which is a kind of holding place where the birds can store food that they've swallowed in order to digest it later, owls are missing such an organ and instead their food goes straight from their mouth to their gizzard. Gizzards are a kind of second stomach that filters out all of the things that owls can't digest. A few hours after an owl eats, the gizzard compresses all of this undigested leftover material into a small nugget. When the owl is ready to eat again, it makes room for the new meal by regurgitating one of its pellet in a matter that looks a lot like a cat coughing up a hairball.
The size of the pellet depends on the owl species and the size of the meal, and the content, of course, depends on what the owl has been eating. In this video, you can see someone from CincyNature dissecting some owl pellets and showing us all of the cool stuff you can learn about what owls eat by examining their pellets. The Barn Owl Trust explains, for example, that Barn Owl pellets often:
. . contain the undigested fur and bones of as many as 6 small mammals, sometimes even more! Occasionally, very unusual remains may be found such as moles or frogs. You can identify what animal the bones came from by looking at the skull and measuring the jaw bones. Bird bones and even bird rings are sometimes found too. A Barn Owl pellet from Essex contained a BTO ring that had been fitted to a wren in Northumberland – 300 miles away!
If you want to see some photos of various pellets from different species of owls, including a Tawny Owl, Kestrel, Barn Owl, and more, check out this page from the Barn Owl Trust. I know they're kind of gross, but to me they are also really fascinating and ultimately pretty cool!
The Barn Owl Trust also offers an educational video and worksheets focused on how to dissect and analyze owl pellets, as well as a pellet dissection pack that contains everything you might need to dissect a Barn Owl pellet — including the pellet! Have fun learning about owl pellets — and if you order a kit to dissect, I hope the pellet you get is chock full of super cool stuff!
Previously:
• Owl puke dissection kit
• Sculptures from digested mouse parts and pulped hornet nests
• 50 Superb Owls near San Francisco
• Barn owls' hearing inspires new electronic devices for wayfinding
• Two sassy owls have a danceoff
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