Jefferson Elementary School Owl Pellet Dissection

Here are the results for the owl pellet dissection that I did with the 5th grade ornithologists at the Jefferson Elementary School in Rotterdam, NY.

Gorski’s class – 12 pellets dissected, 28 mice, 1 shrew, 0 moles and 0 birds found
Guzewich’s class – 11 pellets dissected, 34 mice, 0 shrews, 0 moles and 0 birds found
Fiske’s class – 10 pellets dissected, 28 mice, 0 shrews, 0 moles and 1 bird found
Zanta’s class – 11 pellets dissected, 24 mice, 3 shrews, 0 moles and 0 birds found
Walker’s class – 10 pellets dissected, 24 mice, 2 shrews, 0 moles and 0 birds found

In our discussion we concluded that we could get a better understanding of what the owls eat if we took apart more pellets. Unfortunately time and money constraints didn’t allow us to take apart more pellets with each class. By looking at the data from all the classes though we are “taking apart more owl pellets”. What does this data tell us about owl food preference?

You can take this further if you can figure out how many pellets an owl might make in a night. This is what most likely happens. Starting at dusk an owl hunts and eats until it’s full. Then the owl finds a roosting place where it will rest, spit out a pellet and digest its food. This whole process might take a couple of hours. Then the owl will go off and hunt some more doing it all over again. Can you figure out how many pellets an owl might produce in a night? If you can, you can also figure out how many mice an owl might eat in a year.

Look through the blog for more owl pellet dissection entries. That would provide even more data to analyze and get a better understanding of owl prey preference.