Leptondale Elementary School Owl Pellet Dissection

Ah, spring has run away on me and I am late in getting some of my school visits recorded here on my blog. One of my favorite environmental education activities is owl pellet investigations. It's an incredibly exciting way to learn about owl behavior and there predator-prey relationships.

In May I had my annual visit at the Leptondale Elementary School in Wallkill, NY. The 4th grades do my Owl Ecology session. The culmination of the class is the dissection of owl pellets to learn about what owl eat. Here are the results for all four 4^th grade owl pellet dissections.

Mrs. Psilopoulos’ class dissected 9 pellets and found 28 mice, 2 shrew, 0 moles and 1 bird.

Mr. Zupan’s class dissected 11 pellets and found 35 mice, 0 shrew, 1 mole and 0 birds.

Mrs. Danneman’s class dissected 10 pellets and found 25 mice, 1 shrew, 0 moles and 0 birds.

Mrs. Davis’ and Mrs. Gunderson’s class dissected 10 pellets and found 34 mice, 0 shrews, 0 moles and 1 bird.

The totals for all four classes were 122 mice, 3 shrews, 1 mole and 2 birds found in 40 pellets. That is an average of 3.2 prey per pellet. This average is a little higher than what I often find at other times. What do you think might have caused this higher average?

More food for thought. If an owl produces two pellets a night, how many mice would an owl consume in a year? By eating this many mice do you think the owl helps farmers and orchard growers?

Clearly mice are the most favored prey. With the data we collected it is not clear that shrews are much more favored than moles and birds. More pellets should be dissected to see if there really is a difference. You can order more pellets for yourself (see the link to Pellets,Inc. at left), dissect them and add that data to our findings, or you can look over other reports in my blog from other schools for more data. As a mater of fact, you can look to see what Leptondale students found in past years by looking through the blog archives. My blog is www.schoolyardnaturalist.blogspot.com.

Take some time to wander in the woods and find pellets from owl in your backyard!