I took a walk around the cliffwalk on Prout's neck this morning and saw two snowy owls. I also saw three incidents of fresh kills in the snow. Two were only a couple feet away from each other and possibly could have been a repeated attack on the same victim. Each "kill" was a large crater in the snow smattered with blood, some contour feathers and a few scraps of miscellaneous bits of viscera. The first crater had obvious talon marks in the snow as well. Very cool. There was one really long black skinny tail feather at that site belonging to a male long tailed duck (confirmed with USFWS online feather atlas). There were a lot around today. That was the site that contained two side by side craters. I was thinking the victim might have tried to escape and got attacked a second time. It was approximately in the same location that I saw a snowy last December so the wheels in my head were turning, and seeing the bird later on perched on the roof of one of the beautiful summer homes preening herself happily and defecating on their roof made me conclude that she was in fact the culprit here.
The second kill site was farther down the beach and was composed of another crater, one or two feather bits, something pink and intestiny that I didn't inspect too closely, and one grebe foot. I saw one red necked grebe and a lot of horned grebes today. The foot seemed large for a horned grebe but it's hard to say. The length of the longest toe was about 3 inches. The whole tarsus was not present. A second owl was perched on a fence at the end of the cliff walk. The second owl took me completely by surprise, but did not seem too alarmed to see us. I didn't think of taking pictures of the kill sites until later. Still, I thought it was interesting to share what the Snowy owls on Prout's neck are eating. I found it very cool. Sorry for the lack of pictures :(
-- The second kill site was farther down the beach and was composed of another crater, one or two feather bits, something pink and intestiny that I didn't inspect too closely, and one grebe foot. I saw one red necked grebe and a lot of horned grebes today. The foot seemed large for a horned grebe but it's hard to say. The length of the longest toe was about 3 inches. The whole tarsus was not present. A second owl was perched on a fence at the end of the cliff walk. The second owl took me completely by surprise, but did not seem too alarmed to see us. I didn't think of taking pictures of the kill sites until later. Still, I thought it was interesting to share what the Snowy owls on Prout's neck are eating. I found it very cool. Sorry for the lack of pictures :(
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