BIRD PELLETS—EVIDENCE AS TO FOOD OF BIRDS. 133
Eagle Owl.
(Bubo ignavus.)
Observers note that this bird makes no proper nest, but the
nestlings lie upon a mass of castings of the parents composed
of the fur of rats, rabbits and other small mammals.60
Common Buzzard.
A captive bird of this species was seen to throw up pellets
composed of "feathers, bones, and other indigestible matter"
of undetermined character.61
Mr. T. A. Coward says of this bird: "Mammals it will kill
up to the size of a young rabbit, but its pellets prove that beetles,
especially large dors, are hunted for, and it is known to devour
earthworms. It has no objection to feed on even offensive
carrion and frequently eats dead lambs on the fells."62
Mr. J. H. Salter found, in a nest which contained three
young ones, provision for their sustenance comprising a shrew,
a mouse, and a piece of sheep intestine. "Later, the nest con-
tained pellets and the remains of a crow."63
Pellets of this bird in the Essex Museum are composed of
mammalian fur and bones, including a jaw (left lower ramus)
of mole, with teeth, and a foot of a young rabbit.
Golden Eagle.
"The golden eagle . . . periodically removes the
castings of its offspring—the bones, fur and feathers, matted
into a ball or 'pellet' and thrown out by the mouth—bones
and other broken remains of feasts, and soiled pieces of heather
of which the nest is commonly largely composed."64
White-Tailed Eagle.
The Essex Museum possesses a pellet of this eagle which
was picked up by the keeper beneath the bird's roost in the
Derwent Valley, Derbyshire, in January 1921. It contains a
foot and claws of grouse, mammalian fur, and also stems and
leaves of heather (Calluna) and other plant-fragments, probably
derived at second hand from the stomach of the grouse eaten.
Of the same species (probably the same individual bird),
60 Saunders's British Birds, 1889, p. 300.
61 Zoologist, 1867, p. 597.
62 Birds of the British Isles, 1919, p. 314.
63 Zoologist, 1895, p. 180.
64 Pycraft, Infancy of Animals, p. 74.