Prey Use by a Pair of Barn Owls (Tyto Alba) in a Texas Coastal Habitat‪.‬

Abstract.--Pellets from a pair of barn owls were collected from May 1995 through May 1996 to identify types of prey taken from coastal prairie and salt marsh habitats on the Texas coast and to compare diet composition to occurrence of small mammals in a coastal prairie habitat. Number of pellets egested or number of prey items/pellet did not vary seasonally. Diet contained 82.7% mammals, 7.9% unidentifiable items, 5.2% birds and 4.2% insects. Hispid cotton rats (Sigmodon hispidus) and rice rats (Oryzomys palustris) were dominant prey items, and their rank-order importance in owl diet was independent of seasonal fluctuations in abundance in the field. By contrast, hispid cotton rats and fulvous harvest mice (Reithrodontomys fulvescens) were more abundant in coastal prairie. The difference between relative abundance of small mammals in diet and in coastal prairie likely reflected barn owls searching both coastal prairie and salt marsh habitats or may reflect selection for large-bodied mammals that have higher profitability than small-bodied mammals. **********