Munson fifth graders recently spent their Science class studying owl pellets, which are the small undigested parts of the birds’ food that have been ejected through the mouth.
Pellets do not pass through the intestine of birds and are quite different from droppings. They do not smell, and are not unpleasant to work with. They consist of things like the bones of birds, mammals and fish, teeth, claws and beaks, insect head parts and wing cases, seed husks etc.
Studying the pellets is interesting because, with a bit of detective work, the students can learn a great deal of information about the bird that produced it. The solid remains can be easily extracted and identified, sometimes very precisely. The species of small mammals are easy to identify by their skulls and jawbones, and sometimes from other bones.
