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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • Vol. 123, No. 3. September 2011 
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FIG. I. First documented occurrence of a Barred Owl attracted to carrion, Alamance County, North Carolina, USA. 
chicken meat and portions of an uncooked turkey 
carcass originally for human consumption. These 
did not attract Barred Owls prior to being 
consumed by other species of wildlife. No 
incidental pictures of Barred Owls were taken 
on eight additional camera traps (none of which 
was associated w'ith carcasses) deployed at 
various sites within Alamance County, North 
Carolina throughout 2010. 
DISCUSSION 
Well-documented reports of owls eating carrion 
are uncommon, particularly for Barred Owls. We 
are aware of an anecdotal observation of a Barred 
Owl feeding on a roadside carcass in North 
Carolina (Halley Buckanoff. pers. comm.). Many 
owls are annually injured by vehicles along 
roadsides. For example, from 1979 until early 
2011, ~2,500 owls that had been injured bv 
vehicles were brought into rehabilitation centers 
in North Carolina (R. W. Chamberlain and D. E. 
Scott, unpubl. data). Of these. >1,400 were 
Barred Owls, the remainder were Great Horned 
Owls and Eastern Screech-Owls (Megascops 
asio). Specific evidence that these individuals 
were feeding on roadside carrion was lacking, and 
it was assumed the owls were injured while 
hunting. However, it is possible that some of these 
owls were attracted to or feeding on carrion when 
injured. The tendency for owls to feed along 
roadsides on road-killed animals may be an 
important conservation concern. 
The advantages of scavenging over predator) 
behavior are substantial (e.g.. lack of antipreda- 
tory behavior, low handling costs). Thus, it is not 
surprising that a wide diversity of predator species 
also engage in facultative scavenging (DeVault et 
al. 2003). Our report is the first to provide 
conclusive documentation for scavenging behav¬ 
ior in a well-known forest predator, the Barred 
Owl. 
Camera traps are used by researchers for a 
variety of purposes, including species inventor)/ 
monitoring, population studies, spatial analyses, 
and studies focused on rare or elusive species 
(e.g., Mohd-Azlan and Sanderson 2007, Tobler et 
al. 2008. Rovero and Marshall 2009, Royle et al. 
2009). Attempts to rigorously test or quantify the 
scavenging behavior of raptors (specifically owls) 
with camera traps are uncommon (Kostecke et al. 
