Owl Research Project

This is an alternative to the Owl Pellet Dissection Lab.  If you didn't do, or didn't finish, your owl pellet dissection and the construction of your skeleton, then you should do this project instead. Or you can do it to help bring up your mark.

* answer these questions in full sentences on a separate piece of paper:

1. List at least three different species of owl that live in Canada.

2. Choose one species of owl and sketch and label all the specific organisms in a food chain for that type of owl (specific means: don’t just say “mouse”; instead state what type or species of mouse.)

3. At what trophic level is the owl?

4. What order consumer is the owl?

5. Answer these questions about what a typical owl’s diet:
a) What do most owls eat?
b) Do owls have teeth?
c) How do they chew their food?
d) What is an “owl pellet”?
e) What is an owl pellet mostly made up of?
f) Sketch or paste a picture of an owl pellet.

6. Imagine that a farmer uses some pesticide in a field.  There is one unit of pesticide on each seed that the mice in that field eat.  If a mouse eats 20 seeds per day, how many seeds would a 100 day old mouse have eaten?

7. How much pesticide would an owl get in one month if it eats 2 of these 100-day-old-mice every day?

8. Find the following owl facts:
a) How many degrees can a typical owl turn their head?
b) Owls can find prey under the snow.  How do they achieve this?
c) List three adaptations that owls have that make them very good predators. Hint: think about the 5 senses that most animals have.

9. Name at least one species of owl in the world that is at risk or endangered.

10. What are some threats to owl populations?

Endangered Species Project: Your final poster or power-point will need to be presented to the class.  For a break-down of exactly what you have to do to get good marks on this, refer to the hand-out I gave of Tuesday (which is also posted below!)

If you need to still pick a species, have a look through the Canadian endangered species list at this link:
http://www.registrelep-sararegistry.gc.ca/sar/index/default_e.cfm

AND make sure it's not already taken by someone else. Here are what you and your classmates chose so far:

Last Name,First Name	Species
Abdullah,Ali	?
Bender,Claire	Grizzly Bear
Bennett-Schwetz,Quinn
Bernhardt,Hunter	Mountain Lion
Bolton,Elise
Cloes,Shannon	Tiger Salamander
Colson,Malcolm	Mountain Lion
Davis,Drake	Grey Wolf
Gray,Quinn	Killer Whale
Green,Marshall	Spotted Gar?
Kayes,Michelle
Kern,Drew	American Badger
Koskey,Sara	Black footed ferret
Kreller,Ethan	American Badger
Mason,Alicia	Sea Turtle
Maxwell,Marissa	Nuttall's Cottontail Rabbit
Nudyk,Zachary	Swift Fox
Petitclerc,Danielle	Wolverine
Pinkerton,Makenna	Sea Turtle
Schmidt,Jordan	White Shark
Showers,Shanelle	Black footed ferret
Therrien-Brittain,Abigail	Nuttall's Cottontail Rabbit
Thurber,Chantel
Walters-West,Meghan	Tiger Salamander
Wood,Michael	Swift Fox

How Wolves Change Rivers

Watch the following video clips then try to answer the questions below.  Until the last video, just try to pay attention and understand what is happening.  The last video sums it all up very well, so it’s a good one to use to answer the questions.

Video #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGEXDlUHDE

Video #2 (a great summary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q

Banff animal crossings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JX6cqME6Hw

1. What do wolves mostly eat in this protected park land?
2. What do elk like to eat? Try to be specific.
3. Tree roots near the river’s edge can keep the banks of rivers from eroding.  One type of tree is very good at helping the river this way. What type of tree did they focus on in these videos?
4. Wolves killed some of the elk, but what is more important is that the wolves changed the elk’s behavior.  What important behavior difference happened with the elk that ended up changing the rivers? (Hint: where would be good places and where would be bad places to hide from wolves?)
5. When the trees began to come back to the banks of the rivers, what other animals started to come back too?  List at least 4 here.
6.  Summarize the concept by filling in the blanks below:

Wolves disappeared from this protected park a long time ago.  This caused the r________s in the area to change.  The banks of the rivers were er____ing into the water too much.  This is because there were no r____ts from Aspen t_____s to hold the banks together.  The Aspen trees were gone because e___ were not afraid to go out into the open to eat the young trees.  So w_______s were brought back into the park and released.  The elk stopped coming out into the open to eat the trees by the r______rs.  The Aspen trees grew back and their roots stopped the rivers from ________ing.  This made the water clearer with less dirt in it.  The Aspen trees are a great habitat for many other animals such as song birds and beavers which slowly came back to the park.