No, seriously, it's not a joke! The answer can be found in this neat parcel, which was picked up under a tree at The Lodge a couple of weeks ago.
You might say 'Yuck! a piece of owl poo! Why are you showing us this disgusting item?'
But you'd be wrong - this is not a poo. Owl droppings are nearly all liquid and are shot out of the bird's bottom with some force. This is an owl pellet (actual size about an inch-and-a-half long), and it includes all the indigestible bits of what a tawny owl has been eating. And it comes out of its mouth.
In the photo above, you can just about see that there's a lot of fur and bits and pieces including bones and black shiny things. But if you dismantle the pellet, things become much clearer.
After I soaked the pellet in a bit of water, and teased it apart with a couple of cocktail sticks, I was left with these:
Despite what you might think, owl pellets aren't smelly or sticky. The bird's stomach acid digests the juicy bits, leaving the tough, indigestible stuff like bones and fur. Here's a close-up - some vole and mouse leg bones.
You can even tell what kind of mice and voles the owl ate! Here are some jawbones and teeth I picked out from amongst the fur.
This is part of the lower jaw of a wood mouse - a typical food item for a woodland-dwelling tawny owl. How do I know? Because of the number of sockets left by the mouse's teeth! (I found that out from the Field Studies Council owl pellet guide):
Owls are well-known carnivores, but did you know they also ate beetles? Here's the evidence, in the form of... beetle legs. It must have made quite a crunchy meal snack for the owl - the legs are very tough (no wonder the owl couldn't digest them). And you can still see the little hooks that helped the beetle grip onto bark, twigs and leaves.
If small birds spot where a tawny owl is roosting during the day, they kick up an enormous fuss and 'mob' it - they try to persuade it and annoy it so that it flies away. But, come night-time, the owl can get its revenge. Here's a tiny beak (mostly the bone from inside, but there's a bit of the keratin outer covering), maybe from something like a blue tit? (It was less than half an inch long)
To find your own owl pellet, look at the bottom of big trees, or maybe underneath fenceposts (be careful, because fox poo can look quite similar...). Then get dissecting, and see what you can find! You'll get a weird and wonderful insight into what goes on at night in the woods...