Figure 5  Nearly all of the pellets dissected in classrooms are produced by Barn Owls.

opposite. They concentrate and reflect light to help with night vision. The sound waves are also concentrated by these disks and bounced into ear canals hidden beneath the feathers, just behind each eye. This is comparable to a satellite dish receiving a signal, concentrating it, and bouncing it into a receiver.

Classroom Applications

Owls are probably the most studied and discussed birds in middle-school classrooms today, and they are increasingly being studied in elementary school, high school, and college classes as well. This may be in part because of the intrigue we all have with raptors, especially those that we seldom see. The Barn Owl is relatively common in the United States, yet probably fewer than 1% of students have ever actually seen one. But more than the animal itself, we are fascinated with its by-product—the owl pellet.

Owl pellet studies can last 30 minutes or several hours. The exercises can be adapted to every level, from elementary grades to graduate school. Any owl pellet lab should cover the basics of how pellets are made, which animals are found inside, and where these animals and their food fit in a Barn Owl’s

Enhance food web studies by using clip-art or asking students to draw illustrations. Combining art and biology is especially useful in the lower grades. Individual students can place the illustration of a Barn Owl on top of a page and draw grass and seeds along the bottom. Components of the food web—including worms, insects, lizards, sparrows, rodents, bats, shrews, and moles—can all be filled in. Students then draw arrows from each object to the animal that eats it. This activity also works well on a large illustration board using the entire class for input.

You can teach many rudimentary biological techniques with owl pellets while studying the basic concepts of predators, prey, and their food webs. Owl pellets and their contents are also the perfect place to introduce dichotomous keys, which ask simple "either/or" questions about an object’s character. The choice then sends the individual in one of two directions, depending on the answer. A series of these questions, such as "1a The skull has teeth . . . go to #2," or "1b The skull does not have teeth . . . go to #10," will eventually lead the student to the object’s identity. This type of key is fundamental in all field sciences in which specimen identification is necessary. Another

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