Catawba County News

Discover Owls with a State Park Ranger

Published: June 17, 2021

Parents, do your kids know how important owls were to Native American tribes? Could they name the four most common owls in North Carolina?

If you’d like for them to discover more about these fascinating nocturnal creatures, join the Catawba County Library for two upcoming Summer Learning programs. The interactive Zoom sessions are family-friendly and child-appropriate.

The first takes place at 11 am on Tuesday, June 22, and the second occurs at 5 pm on Tuesday, July 13. Register for one or the other by visiting tinyurl.com/CCSLPOwlsJune or tinyurl.com/CCSLPOwlsJuly or by calling 828-465-8665.

A State Park ranger will be sharing a variety of compelling facts about owls, including what their calls sound like and what they do during the daytime. The ranger will also guide you in working with the dissection kit you can reserve when you register. (One per household, please, while supplies last.)

Each kit features a heat-sterilized barn owl pellet and simple tools used to take it apart and examine it. The pellet is composed of undigested parts of the owl’s prey that it regurgitates after feeding. The pellet can include small bones, fur, and sometimes a whole skeleton. Each kit also comes with a bone identification chart to help you recognize the birds or small rodents the owl consumed.

The naturally collected pellets illustrate the owl’s important role as a predator in the food chain and offer a revealing glimpse of its diet, habitat, and hunting patterns.