Pellets prove a hoot for students

The thought of owls brings many images to people. Owls are commonly thought of as wise, all knowing birds.

Other people imagine owls as solitary night creatures, mysterious in their ways.

But for the third graders at Cobblestone Elementary School in Plumas Lake, their idea of owls came from a much different source then a picture in a book or spotting one at night. Instead, these youngsters had the opportunity to see how owls live through their stomachs.

As an extension to their normal science curriculum, three classes signed on this month to dissect owl pellets.

Owls are unique in that they cannot digest certain elements of their prey including bones, hard tissue, feathers and fur. After swallowing their food whole, owls create a pellet in their stomach made up of the entire non-digestible manner and throw it back up.

These little hard balls of regurgitation are the perfect sample to give students a glimpse into how an owl lives, survives and eats.

“This project focused on life science and gave the kids a chance to focus on what it takes for an owl to survive,” said Charity Holliman, 3rd grade teacher at Cobblestone Elementary.

The students were each given an owl pellet to dissect and by doing so they were able to learn about the owl’s habits, adaptation to its environment and its needs in order to survive.

In preparation for this annual activity, the teachers displayed some of last year’s completed projects.

“Seeing some of the bones that were found last year and the size of some of them really got the kids excited,” continued Holliman.

The activity helped to hone student’s sorting and identification skills by first helping them to discover bones amongst the feathers and fur and then using a chart identifying what type of bones each were. Owl pellets contain many types of bones including those of field mice, small birds and insects. The students

were asked to sort their discoveries based on either bone type or animal type and mount them on black poster board for display during the upcoming Back to School Night.

According to the teachers at Cobblestone, this project is only one of many that will focus the third graders on life science and how things live and survive in the world. Next month the students will be continuing a project that began with a visit to watch the wild Chinook salmon run in the Yuba River and will end with getting salmon eggs delivered to their classrooms to watch them develop until they are ready to be released back into the wild. The students will then complete this life cycle observation with a field trip to

the river for their salmon release.

“Our hope is to continue taking education out of the classroom and seeing the students really excited to learn,” concludes Holliman.

Plumas Lake correspondent Michele Perrault can be reached at (530) 483-3664 or you may email her at mperrault@plumaslakelife.com.