Owl Pellets!

Yesterday, I found an owl pellet in the woods near my house.

What is an owl pellet?

Owls swallow their prey (mice, moles, shrews and small birds) whole or big chunks, but they can't digest bones, fur or feathers. These indigestible parts are compacted into a ball and spit back out. This ball of bones and fur or feathers is called an owl pellet.

It can be an interesting project to dissect an owl pellet and find out what it ate. I decided to dissect the owl pellet I found. Here are the steps I took:

1. To disinfect the owl pellet, we wrapped it in tin foil and baked it at 325 for 45 minutes to kill the germs.

2. While it was baking, I collected the tools we would need: gloves, tweezers, a tray to put the bones in and a bone sorting/identifying worksheet.

3. Once the owl pellet cooled off, we unwrapped the tin foil and used the tweezers to carefully remove the bones from the fur.


4. We collected all the bones in a tray, and used the sorting chart to identify the bones.

Here is a video of us getting ready to dissect the owl pellet
Here is a video of us looking at and identifying the bones we found