Scat or buzzard pellet

[themainzed]

Hi,

Can anyone help with ID of these?

Unidentified Mammals - Wild About Britain Pics

Found them on Sunday. One is nearly all feathers the other all fur including badger hair. Seem too big to be buzzard pellets to me, anyone know how large they can get?

The fur one was more compact in the field but I had a poke at it.

Thanks,

Tim

[vole-woman]

This one: Scat or buzzard pellets - Wild About Britain Pics looks quite twisty. If this was how you found it, I might be thinking mink.

[valleyforge]

They look somewhat on the large side to be buzzard pellets ... these are nomally only 2 - 3cm.

The dropping containing badger hair almost certainly came from a badger.

They will inadvertantly consume a quantity of their own oand other family members' fur and guard hairs whilst grooming, particularly at this time of year when shedding their winter coats.

Incidentally vole-woman, although mink scat is commonly illustrated in books, etc as being dark and twisty, this isn't necessarily diagnostic of them being only from that animal ... pretty much any predator mammal that consumes fur/hair will produce twisty faeces, so they are diagnostic only of the diet, not the animal.

Mink faeces may equally be light coloured, soft and amorphous, if they've consumed mainly worms or amphibians, or predominantly scaley/boney if they've mainly been eating fish.

[vole-woman]

Coo, didn't know that! Thanks. When you click on the link, though, there's a photo by someone else that comes up of old mink scat, which looks a bit like themainzed's stuff.

[vole-woman]

Old Mink scat - Wild About Britain Pics

Scat or buzzard pellets - Wild About Britain Pics

I know one's paler than the other, but they do look similar to me.

[valleyforge]

You are right ... they do look similar. The supposed old mink scat is paler though mainly because of weathering and unfortunately there's no indication of scale on that photo.

themainzed's photo sequence though shows very nicely the overall size (almost 5 in when spread out) and really that's a bit too big to have been produced by a mink at one sitting.

Mink ... indeed all mustelids ... have quite short intestinal tracts, so can't 'store-up' any great quantity of waste. They 'need to go' about every 2 hours or so, whatever they have eaten.

By their size, and the fact that at least some contain badger hair, kind of suggests that they're most likely from a badger.

[vole-woman]

You're a mine of information!

[themainzed]

Hi and thanks for the replies.

I don't think it was badger scat, this wasn't in a latrine or near a defined badger run and other badger scat I've seen is much 'messier' because of their omnivorous diet. This one seemed to be just fur, looked like mainly rabbit fur but with badger hairs too, you can see a couple poking out in one of the pics - black, very coarse and white tipped. The other scat was mainly feathers.

I also thought they would be too big for buzzard but didn't know how big a buzzard pellet could get. The only things I could think off that would scavenge badger roadkill were buzzard or fox, but I would say fox scat is usually 'messier' too although it does contain fur or feathers.

The mink scat does look very similar but again judging by the scale next to the moss, my scat was considerably larger.

Tim

[valleyforge]

Originally Posted by themainzed

Hi I don't think it was badger scat, this wasn't in a latrine or near a defined badger run and other badger scat I've seen is much 'messier' because of their omnivorous diet.

Hi Tim,

Badgers don't just defecate/urinate in latrines ... latrines tend to be sited close to the entrance of an active sett, because pretty much that's as far as a badger can get when it has the urge to 'go', usually after having just awoken (sleep being what mustelids do most of).

Because they have a fairly short tract, when mustelids have to go, they really have to go ... as said, on average within 2 hours of their last meal.

So what you see in their scat is pretty much determined by what they've been most recently eating and can therefore be quite variable.

It is quite possible therefore to find an odd badger scat/spraint where one might have been foraging and just got caught short. They don't always do so in prominent places, and in preference like to back-up against something to do it.

That said however, your premise that the presence of badger hair is due to perhaps a fox eating badger roadkill is certainly not implausible, though I've not personally come across any badger carcase that has been scavenged by anything other than corvids ... we do have a fairly low fox density here however.

I should perhaps explain that because mustelids have incredibly thick and tough skins for their size, unless a badger has been opened up in an RTA (they generally are not by the initial impact), then very few scavengers are able to penetrate the dermal layer ... the corvids of course go for the area around the nose and eyes, which is all they can initially cope with.

[themainzed]

Very interesting point about the difficulty of scavengers penetrating thick badger's hide - that was something I hadn't realised at all.

To give you a bigger picture I found this in a boggy heathy valley with birch scrub. There isn't a stream as such just very soggy sphagnum and heather, rush etc. There is an outlier sett about 3-400yds away in a strip of wood with larger sett in main part of wood.

The scats were about 2 metres away from each other, furry one with badger hairs was next to a birch coppice stool, one with feathers was in much more open area.

Very close to the scats - within 20 metres were evidence of three separate recent wood pigeon kills. No remains except tail feathers, primaries and ring of smaller feathers.

Is it just the badger scavenging difficulty why you are ruling them out as fox or because they are not "messy" enough if you know what I mean - no seeds or beetle elytra or amorphous fecal matter.

Neither of the scats had any significant smell to them at all.

Tim