It's not easy being green

Last night I went for a dusk walk with a friend to find Barn owl which I knew were in the area.

We lucked out on the Barn owl but saw Short-eared owl instead, which are also fantastic birds to watch. I also found this pellet under a well used fence post. It's about 4 centimetres long and you can see the bones sticking out of it.


When I got it home I took it apart to see if I could find out what bird it came from and what it had been eating.


The bones seemed to come mainly from frogs (there was evidence of at least 3), but there were also lots of beetle wing cases among the grisly remains. Above you can see humerus (upper arm), radio-ulna (lower arm), tibio-fibula (shin bone) and vertebrae (back bone). Though no skull. Anyone know why?

Above is a frog's tibio-fibula (shin bone).

All things considered it seems likely that the pellet came from Little owl which I know to live in the area. I also now know that they give Kermit and his mates rather a hard time.