owl pellet dissection

Posted on October 16th, 2011 by mountain girl  |  3 Comments »

Have you ever seen an owl pellet? They are those lovely little packages of fur, feathers and bones that owls regurgitate after a satisfying meal of bird or small beast.

We bought a box of them at Wild Bear, our local ecology shop in Nederland…

and took them home to the dining room table.

Mmmm. Delicious.

That’s a skull hiding in the smaller piece.

Here it is unearthed – I love the little orange teeth. From the bone chart, it may be a shrew.

Zia got to do her own after Caleb was finished. She could hardly wait – dissecting owl pellets is so much fun.

She tried the gloves but they were way too big and clumsy, so she worked with a couple of toothpicks to pull apart the fur and feathers.

Some bits and pieces, including a tiny pelvic bone.

The final pile of loot.

Caleb was ready to go back the same day for more owl pellets. I think once he got started it became like a treasure hunt to see what he could uncover next. He’s hoping for a bird skull in the next box of goodies.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Caleb, General, Little Redhead Girl, Nature, unschool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “owl pellet dissection”

  1. jodi says on October 17th, 2011 at 8:31 am :

    hahaha! Oh my word, so I’m not normally squeamish, but for a quick second I looked away. Then I was too interested. That’s awesome!

  2. 3 amigos says on October 18th, 2011 at 10:23 am :

    OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh!!!!!!!/luv u/mom

  3. Kim says on July 8th, 2012 at 5:38 pm :

    Nice findings! Dissecting owl pellets are like my guilty little pleasure. I just can’t get enough!