When a Great Horned Owl hunts, it uses its ears and eyes to find its prey. An owl has soft feathers so it flies silently. When it catches its prey with its sharp talons, it kills instantly. An owl never carries its prey in its mouth. It always carries it in its feet. It uses its beak to break big pieces into smaller pieces.
Owls are nocturnal. They only hunt at night because Hawks hunt in the day and the owls don't want to make it a competition.
Owls eat other nocturnal animals like mice, rats, skunks, pheasants, squirrels, fish, rodents and sometimes a porcupine because the owl eats the soft belly. Sometimes it eats cats and even another owl.
Later the owl coughs up the undigested parts of its prey in little packages of bones and the fur called pellets. Finding owl pellets on the ground is a sure sign that an owl has a nest nearby.
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| These are the bones of a Vole, which is a kind of mouse. They were found in an Owl Pellet and rearranged to show where they came from on the original vole's skeleton. |
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| You can see the bones and some feathers of a small bird that were found in an Owl Pellet. |