Nature Done Wright

   Since you’re probably a little tired of images taken inside an owl box, I thought I’d share this one  — of real live human beings.

   The humans in question are sixth-graders in the Brookside School in Allendale.

  Celery Farm Marsh Warden Stiles Thomas and I visited all 110 of them to talk about the owl blog and screech owls.

  And they asked tough questions and showed us their reconstructions of creatures found in regurgitated owl pellets. Yum!

  One question I should have answered long ago on the blog: Why do we call the owls Mr. and Mrs. Ace?

   Answer: "Ace" is short for Asio, Latin for "owl."

   If we have different owls next year, I guess they’ll be the Eo family.

   The other thing I’ve neglected on the blog is much of a discussion of owl pellets, probably because I haven’t seen any from the Ace family yet.

     Miss Barnett’s sixth-grade class has been studying barn-owl pellets — taking them apart and trying to figure out what creature they were before they were owl food.

    The students had to compare the skulls and other bones to skeleton templates, then try to reconstruct the skeletons. As you’ll see from the five examples below, they are very cool.

    Who said that owls don’t get enough roughage in their diets?

   Thanks for sharing, Brooksiders!