Hi Gary,

This is very interesting.

Could you elaborate a bit on what "big" bones you found and how crushed up they were? Did you have the opportunity to examine roost sites as well?

What I was seeing with one (emphasis on ONE and only one) Snowy Owl that I followed around quite extensively was it would mostly nab grebes and gulls... so really big. It would eat on the bird at its roost, mostly the breast meat, and leave the bones in a pile at the roost - i.e. they weren't in the pellet, which is why I think pellet analysis may present an inaccurate picture of what these birds are really eating. I have no doubt at all that this one owl preferred big birds and it was in an area where there should have been plenty of rodents around.

I do also wonder if, during an irruptive event, these owls locate to a particular area based on their feeding preferences.

Cindy Ashy

--- On Sat, 2/18/12, gary fredricks <gfredricks at wa-net.com> wrote:

> From: gary fredricks <gfredricks at wa-net.com>
> Subject: [Tweeters] Regarding Snowy Owl Pellets
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Date: Saturday, February 18, 2012, 9:40 PM
> Regarding the Snowy Owl pellet
> thread.? Back in December (12/ 16 and 17/11) I found
> and dissected 11 pellets that I assume were from Snowy Owls
> out on Damon Point.? The pellets were from under
> several logs that either I had seen owls roosting on or
> seemed like likely roosts.? I didn't get too technical
> in my analysis.? I did a study on Long-eared Owls back
> in the 70's while I was at Iowa State University, so I do
> have a little background in this sort of thing.?
> Anyway, all of the pellets contained nothing but bird bones
> and feathers.? I classified the bones into three size
> groups, sparrow sized, Sandlerling sized and "bigger".?
> While I didn't pursue exact ID of the bones, it was easy to
> surmise what was going on.? In the area around the
> drift wood where these owls were living, it was common to
> see song and fox sparrows and there were a few horned larks
> out in the more open areas.? These probably made up the
> small bird prey.? The beaches were also frequented by
> Sanderlings and Dunlin which probably made up the larger
> bird prey.? A couple of the pellets contained larger
> bones, usually broken, although there were some elongated
> neck vertebrae.? These pellets also contained some
> coarse sand.? I surmised that these may have been
> scavenged dead birds and at the time there were a lot of
> dead western grebes washing up in the area.? I also
> noticed a couple Snowies with red blood stains on their
> facial feathers that may have been from scavenging larger
> prey items.? I know much of this is circumstantial and
> very limited, but the fact that all the pellets had bird
> remains in them and no mammal remains is not.? I makes
> you wonder what really? got the MaKay's bunting, if
> that was what those feathers are from.
>
> Gary Fredricks
> Washougal, WA
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