I know owls and kestrels regurgitate bones and fur in the form of pellets.
Got me thinking about other birds mainly the sparrow hawk as they usually seem to eat the flesh and leave the bones.
Checking on Google I was really surprised how many birds produce pellets
Corvids, cormarant, heron, kingfisher and lots of other species.even robin was mentioned
Can anyone add to this
Ray
Hi Ray,can't help with any others that do ,but it's going to be a very interesting thread ,it's not something I have thought about,but will be interesting to see what others think
Regards Mick
I've certainly heard of all those species producing pellets. I think gulls do too.
Seems that most carnivorous birds produce pellets, from golden eagles, and herring gulls to hobbies and blackbirds, which brings me to perhaps my favourite bird fact of all. Back in the 1930's the BTO wanted to investigate the diet of the little owl in order to examine what effect they have on native wildlife. During the study the researcher they employed, one Alice Hibbert-Ware dissected 2460 little owl pellets, and among other things found 343 earwig casings in one pellet, and the remains of 2000 crane-fly eggs in another.
Hi Ray,
All the birds mentioned so far do produce pellets or lumps of reguritated undigestable stuff. and Michael is right about gulls. The difference is that owl pellets tend to be more tightly compacted and "rolled up" than other species', so tend to survive longer than the softer looser pellets brought up by non-owls. You are therefore more likely to find owl pellets than others.
With regard to the examination or Little Owl pellets in the 1930's, it was not only the first time this type of investigation had been done, but it resulted in showing that the Little Owl did not take the "hundreds" of game bird chicks as claimed by gamekeepers. Having shown the diet was largely insects and some small mammals, the BTO were able to stop the extermination of the bird in the UK.
(It had been introduced to this country from the continent in the 19th. century. It was the companion bird of the goddess Athene and has been depicted on Greek currency for thousands of years - it's even on one of the Euro notes printed in Greece.)
Jenni
Thanks for your replies
And many thanks to Super Yettie and Jenni for sharing your knowledge.
As a kid I used to break owl pellets up and stick what I found onto sheets of paper.
Mother wasn't pleased but used to tollerate it lol.
AS jenni said its because we don't find the pellets from other birds that we don't realise it happens and its certainly been an eye opener for me.
Little owls are one of my favourite birds and many a night I observed them on the factory I worked as a security man. The ones I saw ate a lot of worms and on a factory that has lighting I saw them sitting on posts, dropping to the ground and retreiving earth worms.
Also saw a number of male ghost moths hovering about a foot or so from the ground and saw them dissappearing one at a time. On watching closer it was a little owl catching them in mid air and dropping to the ground to eat them. All the moths were taken but it was a great experience.
Also observed a barn owl running along the ground after crane flies.
If anyone else wishes to add please do
Found a photo of a Starling producing a pellet: http://www.dublinbirding.ie/pages/archive/sightings/Sept2011/Starling%20JF.jpg. Waders also produce pellets. It's not just animal bits that are found in pellets - those from Rooks, for example, are often made up mainly of indigestible plant matter.
Many thanks Aiki
good picture , believe someone put a picture on the thread a couple of month ago.not sure if that was a robin. Just shows you never stop learning.
I've see starlings doing that! I thought they were just expelling their last feed to gobble up my suet pellets. I'll get my bins out to make sure.