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Included in this kit: two medium-sized sterilized barn owl pellets, two bamboo paddle picks, and a single instructional insert featuring common rodent and bird skeletal identification charts.
Dissecting barn owl pellets from different regions of the United States allows students and investigators to see how habitat shapes diet. Barn owls are opportunistic hunters, eating what the landscape provides. Because the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest are very different ecosystems, the prey found in their pellets often reflects those differences.
In the Pacific Northwest, barn owls commonly hunt in cooler, wetter environments—farmland edges, grasslands, wetlands, and forest margins. Rodents dominate these habitats, so pellets from this region frequently contain remains of voles, deer mice, shrews, and other small mammals adapted to moist conditions and dense vegetation.
In the Southwest, barn owls work a very different landscape. Deserts, scrublands, and open grasslands support prey such as kangaroo rats, pocket mice, and desert mice, as well as occasionally small reptiles adapted to dry climates and nighttime activity.
Examining pellets from both regions provides a hands-on opportunity to explore ecology, adaptation, and food webs. The same predator can reveal two very different stories about the landscapes it hunts.
