pellet or poo 2nd look

[21st century pict]

originally posted Aug 2011

On a track that leads up to an old peat cutting I found lots of bird pellets and some very large pellets?. Apart from the spinal colum and ribs, the fir and bone fragments seem to lie at random in a compact mass of fur. The pellets are so large I am wondering if they may be from an animal, are this large pellets normal for birds of prey. There's lots of Buzzards and the occasional Osprey in the area, but walking across a peat bog the only tracks we could find were of Red and Roe deer and surprisingly for the exposed position 300m a Badger track. no fox tracks .

So here is my Question would the very small bones survive a fox gut? Looks very big for a fox,poo about 8 inch long

.6 inch scale.

One of the Bird dudes mentiond Eagle Owl he dident see it, only from my description.

There were also lots of smaller pellets that composed mainly off Crowberry and Blaeberry possibly Grouse?
..Look familiar to anyone ?.

 

[blacktimberwolf]

The top one ( grey) looks more like a raptors rejection pellet, one way to tell if it's fox is by smelling it, fox scat has a charateristic musky arome.


The bottom one could be a mustildae of some kind, the fact that the animal pooed on a rock indicates that it's a scent marker............Also mustilidae love fruit & their scats are often composed almost exclusively of fruit skins, seeds & pips as & when various fruits ripen............again the smell would be an indicator........it could be fox too.

 

[Opal]

Last night RM had in his hand, the pellet of an eagle, looked very similar to that middle pic.

 

[21st century pict]

Sorry Blacktimberwolf
I should have said I only put it on the rock to dissect and photograph it.
I did smell the large pellet but there was no noticeable odour and it couldn’t have been that old as it was very exposed on the side of the hill.
Cheers Dude's.

 

[Mesquite]

reported

 

[Bodhi]

The middle picture certainly looks like a pellet and its about the right size for a bird one.

The larger mass with it (top pic) seems to be a poo- it is a typical shape for a carniverous mammal but very large. However, I was cautioned by a guy that taught me some tracking stuff that real excrement can be quite differnt from the books' size guides.

In terms of whether bones would survive a trip through a fox's digestive tract, I am guessing they could. I don't think a fox has a particularly strong digestive system like a snake for example.

All the best

Rich