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To date, apart from a few leaflets and magazine articles, there has not been enough available information on bird pellets to allow you to see what a bird has eaten. As a kid, I always thought that only owls coughed up pellets, but just about all birds create them, depending on what they have been eating.  Ed Drewitt has created a great guide here that examines the items found in a pellet, ranging from small mammal bones to insect cases. A key area of guidance is on how to dissect each pellet and how to identify what you find. Not many adults (other than professionals) examine pellets but many school children do, and this book is laid out in an easy style that allows anyone to work out what they are looking at.

In order, the book first looks at what a pellet is and how it is formed, and then moves on to tell you how to dissect it. Naturally, the initial focus is on owl pellets, but then widens to those created by a range of birds of prey, followed by crows and gulls, and some common garden birds. A helpful guide to the bones of small mammals and other indigestible animal parts – such as teeth – follows. There is also a look at hard insect parts that occur in pellets. There are many helpful photos to allow quick identification of what you are looking at.

Keith Betton