Unidentified Owl pellet contents, can anyone help?

[lovecrawlies]

Hi, I'm looking for help! I found two tawny owl pellets in the garden just befor Christmas. The contents appear to be a field vole and a woodmouse, but there are a couple of mysteries.
Mixed in with the densely packed short hair making up much of the pellets were some much longer hairs. They seem too long for either a woodmouse or vole. Could the mouse actually be a young rat? The tooth socket matched the picture given in the RSPB key for a woodmouse, and was too small for an adult rat.

Apparently tawny owl pellets commonly include beetle wing-cases. I found some invertebrate bits and peices, but they don't look like beetle elytra. Anyone know what they are? My neighbour keeps bees, do owls eat bees, could these be bits of bees?

Thank you for any suggestions!

[Dogghound]

The hair looks like the whisker of a rat/small mammal.

The other photo's show parts of the legs and sternites, could possibly be a bee. Owls will feed on invertebrates especially when food is in short supply. Are you sure they are tawny owl pellets and not little owl?

[lovecrawlies]

Thank you for your reply!

Whiskers are an interesting idea, although the things were very fine and flexible, and quite plentiful, which made me think of guard hairs. Would the digestive process soften whiskers? I wonder if it would be possible to distinguish definitively if I took a picture through the microscope?

Re. the ID of the pellets, the size, look and contents seemed right for tawny owl, and I know they visit the garden. I'm including a pre-dissolution photo with a 2p for scale, and would welcome your view. There was a nearly complete woodmouse skull in one of the pellets, would that be likely for a little owl?



Thanks again!

[faz]

little owls do take rodents and small birds from the looks of your pellet i would say tawny i have given a few owl pellets to local schools to dissolve them and work out what creaturs have been eaten

[Dogghound]

Yes Tawny owl