Owl Pellets by Gabriella Guevara Introduction Comparative Question

Owl Pellets by: Gabriella Guevara

Introduction

Comparative Question Is a pocket gopher eaten more by the barn olws daily or the spotted owl? In the results the Spotted owl did eat more pocket gopher then the Barn owls. How the result was found by adding all if the data of what the spotted owl ate and then divide the total by how many the spotted owl ate of pocket gopher and do the same with the barn owls. I predicted that the barn owl would slighly eat more then the spotted owl but the spottedowl ate a lot more then the barn owls. So the pprodiction was proven wrong.

Procedure First of all when getting an owl pellet it is covered in tin foil after words open the tin foil and thats the owl pellet. Usually there are tools that are used to help with finding bones in the pellet. The first tool used is a toothpick, and tweezers. When using the tweezers and toothpicks it helps when having hair on the bones that is stuck in the bones found. Then the next step is to sort the bones into different catergories. One kind of category is like ribs or skulls. Then after sorting the bones identify the kind of prey then place or glue the bones on the prey diagram.

Diagram of prey Pocket Gopher

Prey animal found Pocket gopher Number of each 1 1 Pocket gopher Non-prey items found (if any) None

Bar Graphs

Data for comparative question

Discusion 1. The scientists use the owl pellets to find out the owls habits of eating and also maybe figure out where they live. And also how many animals they eat. 2. In my pellet there were 2 pocket gophers in my pellet. There were only twenty six in the whole grade so that means that they were hard to find. 3. Looking at all the grades total I think the average is three contained in one pellet. My class average was three also there were some other classes that had the same average and the highest was eight animals and there was only one person who had eight and everyone else had at least one to three. 4. There would be more prey because usually the owls consume more than one. 5. They consume fourteen per week and seven hundred twelve per year. 6. The most prey species that was consumed was the vole. 7. I would encourage these farmers to shoot these owls because they could to start to become extinct and maybe they could also get someone to take the owl to a better place.

Conclusion The reason for the owl pellet investigation is to find out what the owls eating habits are like, when going through the pellet usually scientists sort the bones they found into groups. The types of groups are teeth, skull, ribs, and other kinds of bones. After sorting the bones the scientists find out by the skull teeth or fur what type of animal it is. Some of the animals are pocket gopher, vole, mouse shrew, and bird. A pellet it self is things that can't be digested by the owl such as fur and bones it is then regurgitated from the owl which forms a pellet. This is how scientists use pellets to determine what they eat and where they could be living in what climate.