Discarded Knowledge: Unlocking the Secrets of Owl Pellets | Chapter 10 | Research Perspective on Biological Science Vol. 4

Bird pellets are an accumulation of undigested food items consumed by birds and cannot be excreted as faeces but are regurgitated by mouth as compact packages. These contain hard, and not easily digested, material which is of little nutritional value to the bird – the bones, claws, beaks or jaws and teeth of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes; the thorax or wing-cases of insects and seed husks and other coarse vegetable matter. Hard materials are then usually encased by the softer, and equally indigestible, material of mammal fur, bird feathers or vegetable fibres. Often characteristic, these pellets can provide valuable clues to diet. Of the many hundreds of bird species that produce pellets, owls make the pellets that, when dissected and analysed, can provide the most accurate record of the diet of any bird.

 

Here, we look at how the owl's pellet is produced and how the dissection and analysis of them are crucial to so many fields of study:  – entomology (distribution of arthropod species, their communities and their environments), mammalogy (diversity and structure of small mammal assemblages), ornithology (diet and distribution), palaeontology and taphonomy (taphonomic and taxonomic analyses of bones and teeth of microvertebrates contained in ancient owl pellets and markers of human actions), education and citizen science (an exciting and interactive introduction to environmental studies and how amateurs can contribute to data gathering), botany (owl-mediated seed dispersal), ecology (evidence of environmental contamination and pollution) and finally, we tell how owl pellets, the discarded remains of a meal, themselves become a food source, serving as a snack for vultures. Although discarded in nature, owl pellets hide a host of secrets just waiting to be unlocked.

 

Author (s) Details

Alan Sieradzki
Global Owl Project, USA.

 

Heimo Mikkola
University of Eastern Finland, Koskikatu 9B31, 80100 Joensuu, Finland.

 

 

Please see the book here:- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/rpbs/v4/5628