Whodunnit? (Warning deceased animal image)

[Nomad64]

Stumbled across the remains of what I assume is a recently (but fairly comprehensively!) deceased hare this afternoon.

Only pelvis and hind legs left plus a lot of carefully plucked fur which I guess rules out a fox or badger?

The other “usual suspects” spotted regularly are buzzards, red kites, tawny owls and corvids - I believe there are peregrines around but I’ve never seen them.

A tawny owl took a leveret back in the spring.

Any thoughts on whodunnit?

 

[crosslandkelly]

Colonel Mustard with the candlestick.

 

[Robson Valley]

I'll say Fox. Not that much different from the mess that a scavenger coyote will leave.
Raptor/carnivorous birds here do not feed on the ground if they can help it.
oo much competition from the 4-legged tribes.
Even so, the birds are the last in line at the road kills, even in winter.

 

[Nice65]

Or was it....Reverend Green in the conservatory with the lead pipe?

That looks to be a bird of prey kill, the plucked fur.

 

[Nomad64]

Or was it....Reverend Green in the conservatory with the lead pipe?

That looks to be a bird of prey kill, the plucked fur.

The piping is all mdpe - much safer!

 

[Broch]

Our foxes don't tend to pluck the fur - but then, the kill and the devour could be completely different species. So, a fox may have killed but a buzzard or even kites may have finished off the carcass.

 

[Nomad64]

Our foxes don't tend to pluck the fur - but then, the kill and the devour could be completely different species. So, a fox may have killed but a buzzard or even kites may have finished off the carcass.

I’ve always associated careful plucking of fur and feathers with raptors rather than four legged predators/scavengers but as you say, the perp may have had an accomplice to help clean up (though unlikely to have been Mr Wolfe ).

The vole population seems to have crashed this year - last year they were everywhere. Still a few around but slimmer pickings for the raptors.

 

[crosslandkelly]

Don't Owls eat everything, then excrete bone and fur in their pellets?

 

[Nomad64]

Don't Owls eat everything, then excrete bone and fur in their pellets?

I’ve pulled a few owl pellets apart recently and they typically contain the bones and fur of several voles and similar small rodents which are typically swallowed whole.

https://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/barn-owl-facts/barn-owl-pellet-analysis/

However, a full grown hare can weigh up to 5kg and although our victim may not have been fully grown (and could have been a rabbit - but I’ve not seen one in that field), there is no way an owl would scoff the lot.

I did get some video earlier this year of a tawny owl flying off with a dead leveret that I had left as bait.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/30865846@N02/40583326285/in/dateposted/

 

[Janne]

Would a bird eat most of the carcass like that?
Head, neck, feet?

Fox is my guess.

I have seen foxes pluck birds and hares. Looks quite funny, when stuff gets stuck to their noses and mouths.

 

[Robson Valley]

We have Great Horned Owls which can easily fly away wth a rabbit.
I've had the good fortune to watch the moment of the strike, the kill and the flight.
They rip the rabbit to pieces, swallowing skin, fur and innards. They must have the skin and fur or they die.
They cough up huge mixed pellets of the indigestible parts. Typically 5 vole skulls in a pellet.
Dissecting sterilized owl pellets is a part of the 5th grade curriculum science unit on owls.
For years, I attended classes as a guest teacher to aid the dissections, teaching the anatomy of what the kids would find.
It's essentially nothing but fur and bones.

We look around the bases of big, old river-bottom cottonwood trees for pellets.
That's how you find a territorial roosting place. They hoot from those places before sunrise.

 

[Broch]

Don't Owls eat everything, then excrete bone and fur in their pellets?

Our owls (such as Tawny and Barn) are small compared with Eagle Owls and Great Horned; they come in at around 500g compared to over 3Kg for a Eurasian Eagle Owl - when you dissect a Tawny owl pellet or a Barn owl pellet it typically contains a surprising amount of beetle parts and very small rodent parts.

 

[dwardo]

To me it looks as if there is a circular spread of debris and its a pretty small diameter. So buzzard stood pretty much central, chomping away and depositing the bits of animal all around them whilst they are keeping an eye out 360.

Or its aliens.

 

[crosslandkelly]

To me it looks as if there is a circular spread of debris and its a pretty small diameter. So buzzard stood pretty much central, chomping away and depositing the bits of animal all around them whilst they are keeping an eye out 360.

Or its aliens.

Hahaha!

 

[Nomad64]

To me it looks as if there is a circular spread of debris and its a pretty small diameter. So buzzard stood pretty much central, chomping away and depositing the bits of animal all around them whilst they are keeping an eye out 360.

Or its aliens.

A buzzard would have been high on my list of suspects - I spotted it in late afternoon and what was left it seemed pretty fresh so it could have been an early morning kill although a combination of nocturnal predators and daytime scavengers is quite possible.

The remains bones disappeared overnight but whatever took them eluded my trailcam which might suggest a quick moving early morning avian scavenger.

Quite a few kites around but rarely seen on the ground but the buzzards regularly sit on fence posts until you get almost within touching distance and we’re regular visitors to the rat buffet I left out for them. We even found the leg of a lambing casualty on top of an outhouse where no four legged scavenger could get to.

Here is a utube vid (not mine) of a couple of buzzards scavenging on a roadkill badger.

Aliens - unlikely, although there are some funny looking types over the other side of the valley in Radnorshire!

 

[daveO]

I'm going for raptor of some kind by the way it has been plucked and cleaned. A fully grown hare would be a dangerous target for most birds though so I assume this was a young animal or a large raptor. Any goshawks around your way? I've seen buzzards fly off with rabbits so I'm thinking a less powerful bird might eat part of a meal on the ground if they thought it was safe then carry the rest off when it was lighter. Maybe a big female sparrowhawk?

 

[Nomad64]

Another whodunnit, this time from between 1.00 and 3.00 this afternoon - a well and truly plucked pigeon, just a head, feathers and a few bits of guts.

I guessing a sparrowhawk this time - Mrs N had seen a raptor smaller than our usual red kites and buzzards being mobbed by crows earlier in the morning.

 

[Broch]

It would have to be a female sparrow hawk; a wood pigeon is too big for the male (so brown not grey). Then, of course, there are peregrines and goshawks

Have a good look at some of the primary feathers; you can sometimes see the beak marks where the hawk has grasped or even cut through the quill when it is plucking the prey. It doesn't tell you which species but will tell you it's a bird of prey kill.

 

[Nomad64]

Well they say murderers often return to the scene of their crime.

I put the trailcam on the (very limited) remains of the pigeon and caught the perp - a lesser spotted werehare!

 

[Lou]

that's really interesting, as I found what I thought was a wolf or lynx deer kill last winter in my neck of the woods and the fur was scattered all around in a circle like this - I had not even thought that it could have been scavengers who had come afterwards. I found bits of the carcass all over the woods and I assumed they had been dragged there by foxes and the like. Thanks, I have broadened my horizons a little. We do have a few pairs of vultures here, so it could very well have been those doing the scavenging if not the buzzards or eagles.