The spotted owlet, Athene brama, preys on smaller birds, rodents, reptiles, amphibians, worms, and insects. So can the bird be useful to control agricultural pests?
To verify this potential, V Sunitha and her colleagues at the Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University, Hyderabad recently conducted experiments.
Athene brama, named after Athena, a Greek goddess and Brahma, an Indian god
Image: Sanjiv Khanna, via Wikimedia Commons
Spotted owlets swallow their prey and regurgitate indigestible components such as hair, bones, scales and exoskeleton as pellets. The pellets can tell us about their dietary preferences.
The research team surveyed the area in and around Rajendra Nagar, Hyderabad, to identify the roosting, nesting, and perching locations of Athene brama brama, the subspecies found in the region. They collected about 280 pellets.
In the lab, they washed, dried, and separated the pellets from debris and identified about 1,000 prey items. About half of the spotted owlet diet consisted of insects. The remains of rodents, reptiles, amphibians, and other unidentifiable invertebrates were also found in the pellets.
“Beetles, grasshoppers, earwigs, and some unidentified insects were most common in the diet of the owlets,” says V Sunitha, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University, Hyderabad.
“Our data shows that the spotted owlet can control insect pests in agricultural fields”, adds V Vasudeva Rao, her senior colleague.
Pakistan Journal of Zoology: 1-4 (2022);
DOI: 10.17582/journal.pjz/20201206111201
Reported by Aparna Kalawate
Zoological Survey of India, Western Regional Centre, Pune
*This report was written during the third online workshop on science writing organised by Current Science
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Reblogged this on aparnasci and commented:
Spotted Owlet story
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