Hunting/food
The diet of the Eurasian Pygmy Owl includes mostly small vertebrate mammals like voles, lemmings, and mice. They may also catch small birds like thrushes, crossbills, chaffinches, and leaf-warblers. They are even able to catch these prey birds in flight sometimes. Other prey may include small lizards, bats, fish, and insects. During the winter months, the owls may store food in tree cavities. Because these small owls lack the ability to fly silently, they are mostly diurnal. This means that they are mostly active during the daytime, a unique trait since most people think of all owls as being nocturnal creatures. This is advantageous because much of their prey is also diurnal. The owls are most active just before sunrise and shortly after sunset.
Read more about this topic: Eurasian Pygmy Owl
Famous quotes containing the words hunting and/or food:
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Would mankind be but contented without the continual use of that little but significant pronoun “mine” or “my own,” with what luxurious delight might they revel in the property of others!... But if envy makes me sicken at the sight of everything that is excellent out of my own possession, then will the sweetest food be sharp as vinegar, and every beauty will in my depraved eyes appear as deformity.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)