Week Two -- Owl Pellets

This week we learned about owl pellets.  We started by watching a video about owls and learned things like:
1.  Barn owls are the most widespread bird in North America
2.  They like to live in barns as well as other places like church steeples.
3.  Owl pellets are found near where owls nest.
4.  Female barn owls are slightly larger than males, and their back feathers are darker.

We dissected our own owl pellets and found skeletons of rodents and birds.  Some students found more than one animal in their pellet, and one student had most of a rat skeleton but no skull!

We also learned about a research study done by scientists in Washington state.  They were reporting data from a new method they designed for finding out which owls are in a specific area.  Before, people used recordings of owl calls, but they realized that when two species of owls are near each other, the smaller owls don't call out in response to the recordings.  So, the new method used two dogs that were trained to find owl pellets.  The scientists found that using the dogs to find owls was more accurate than using the recordings.