fae AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
iN OSs) AUD UFB70° NS O16 Te keryY 
ROOSEVELT ROAD AND LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO 5, ILL. 
Number 107 September, 1958 
Owl Pellets 
By Mrs. NAOMI MCKINNEY 
How MANY PEOPLE, when you speak of owl pellets, say, “Owl pellets! What 
are they? I’ve never heard of them.” So, first I want to explain how owl 
pellets are created. 
Most owls swallow their food whole or in large chunks, torn off by their 
beaks or claws. The indigestible material, consisting of bones, fur and 
feathers, is rolled up in different sized pellets and regurgitated some hours 
after the owl has eaten its meal. By 
examining these pellets one can easily 
tell what the owl has eaten. Pellets are 
found mainly beneath the roosts where 
the owls pass the daylight hours. Ever- 
green trees are their favorite roosting 
places. If enough food is available owls 
will remain in one place most of the 
winter, 
Just such a place was found by my 
Junior Audubon group (also my sixth 
grade class) in a small cemetery about 
a mile northwest of Atwood, Illinois. 
There one January day, eight years ago, 
we were out on a bird hike when sudden- 
ly from a large pine tree owls came fly- 
ing in every direction. We were startled 
at first, but finally coming to our senses, 
we began counting. There were at least 
eleven owls and maybe more, as some 
had flown away by that time. Most of 
them were short-eared owls, but some 
long-eared owls were also seen. 
We immediately began a search for 
pellets. The ground was literally covered with them. We filled our pockets, 
carried all we could in our hands and went back to school to learn what 
we could about the food of owls. The panel you see here is one of the 
results of our tearing the pellets apart and mounting what we found. 
You see skulls of different kinds of mice, mostly meadow mice, a few 
shrews, and a few birds. One can easily recognize the fluted 'teeth of meadow 
mice. Teeth tipped with reddish brown belong to shrews, of which we found 
a few. If you know your bones well enough, you may determine age and sex 
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