We did a most fascinating activity this afternoon...dissecting owl pellets. Since we just studied rodents in Apologia's Land Mammals, they recommended this as a project. Basically Owls swallow their prey whole and since bones have little nutritional value, they "gag" them back out surrounded by fur/feathers and other non-useful parts. It does sound totally gross and the idea received general negativity around here (except Josh and I), but everyone really enjoyed the dissection. Hannah even said multiple times that it was much better than she thought. We purchased our pellets from Owl Brand Online...I ordered two different barn owl pellets (one West and one Central, the largest size), and two Horned Owl Pellets as they seemed to vary quite a bit more (one large and one small one came). They also had a free informational guide to help.
as you can see...they begin as a lump and are easy to pull apart
the size of the bones in this pellet (horned owl) were huge compared to the others
James was by far the most methodical
Josh's (upper left) was also from a horned owl (much smaller pellet)and it had lots of broken bones
the girls found six skulls in their pellet
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