Some (very) preliminary diet findings

Here are a few of the more interesting prey items found in the scat analysis so far. Most of the samples contain mammalian prey items (i.e. composed mainly of hair), and of those, most seem to be rodent. I still need to go through all those with hair and look at cross-sections under the microscope to identify the species (or at least to genus level). Nevertheless, these are the more exciting ones:

Synthetic material

Very large bones (relatively speaking) and some knitted synthetic material. Anyone missing a Yorkie?

Snake skin

Penguin feathers

TMC27 Disa was captured near Boulder's Beach as she was killing penguins. Voilà, the evidence.

Lizard head

Amphibian skeleton

Strange combination

Finding quite a few samples with a  combination of rodent hair and bones, and snake scales

A very large claw

Ticks!

The record is 28 in one sample!

Whole bird foot

Look carefully to spot it! Finding quite a few of these...

Grazing?

Lots of samples contain blades of grass. We think this aids digestion, particularly for very hairy prey.

Snake-only dinner

This sample was unusual as it contained only snake skin and bones

Feathers

Sometimes entire, intact feathers are found

Pollution?

Found some plastic in this one. Could be that the prey item (probably a rat) ate it first.

Hope you enjoy the photos!

Gabi Leighton