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Wildlife Spotting

Photo by Jacob Gorneau
Published on Project Noah
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42.3548, -74.022

Field Notes

Description:

Are these owl pellets or deer droppings?

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (4)

No problem, happy I could be of help. :-)
Thank you very much, Sarah. Your help is very much appreciated. For this one too, I have changed the category to mammals and am going to be looking at some deer scat, and see if I can find something similar. The feces were actually on the oak leaf in the first place, but I don't mind taking it as my idea. ;-)
Just looked at it again and noticed that both have a pointy end, this is the back end of the feaces (last to leave the anus) you can tell this as the anal muscles pull shut after passing, leaving this tell tail shape on feaces.
They would be the right shape, but the lack of fur and bone makes me doubt it being an owl pellet. It is most likely to be mammal feaces. You can determine if it came from an owl by the fur and bone like I said and you don't even need to open it up to tell, you would see much of the fur on the outside with some small bones, lager bones like the skull will be inside the pellet. But these are to clean and smooth to be owl pellets. Good find and great idea taking the picture of then on the leaf for size comparison :-)
Photographed
PublishedDecember 28, 2012

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