This morning I came across this weird-looking bundle of hair and stuff in the bush surrounding Manly Dam National Park near Sydney:

Date spotted: 20 January 2019 (Summer)

Location: Manly Dam National Park, New South Wales, Australia: 33°46’24.5″S 151°15’04.4″E

At first I thought it was some weird creature, but it had no visible eyes and didn’t really look alive, although it was obviously animal in nature. I picked up a stick and turned the object over gently. It didn’t try to move away. Definitely not alive. It looked the same on both sides. No obvious undercarriage.

So then I thought, maybe it’s some dead creature that’s become covered in a thick fungus. It’s summer here in Sydney—hot, humid, lots of fungus on the trees and mould on animal poo in the forest. In fact, I’ve seen animal poo that’s completely white and fuzzy, with long tendrils of mould standing up straight.

Still, the fungus idea didn’t quite fit the bill. The stuff covering this object looked more like fur than fungus.

So I took a photo and moved on.

When I got home and showed my husband the photo of this weird thing I’d seen, he suggested it might be owl’s vomit. They do that, he said. They regurgitate fur and stuff. So I looked it up. Indeed they do.

The official name for owl vomit is owl pellet. I think this one must be from a Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua), because I’ve seen those birds in the same area of the bush before, and because this pellet was big. It was around 6 inches long (15 cm) and 2 inches (5 cm) at its widest.

Here’s a Powerful Owl that I saw a while ago, also at Manly Dam. This owl has its prey (a dead possum) in its grip:

An owl’s pellet consists of fur, bones, and other bits and pieces of its prey that the owl can’t digest. An owl needs to regurgitate a pellet once or twice every night, six hours or more after the owl has eaten.

If you like, you can see more about the Powerful Owls I’ve seen around Manly Dam.