Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 65(1): 141-149, doi: 10.3897/travaux.65.e65230
Effects of a forest landscape on the prey composition of the Common Barn-owl Tyto alba in southern Bulgaria
Boyan Milchev‡‡ University of Forestry, Sofia, Bulgaria
Corresponding author: Boyan Milchev ( boyan.m@abv.bg ) Academic editor: Adam Costică © Boyan Milchev. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Milchev B (2022) Effects of a forest landscape on the prey composition of the Common Barn-owl Tyto alba in southern Bulgaria. Travaux du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle “Grigore Antipa” 65(1): 141-149. https://doi.org/10.3897/travaux.65.e65230 |  |
Abstract
The diet of the Common Barn-owl in a forest- and shrub-dominated hunting area in the Strandzha Mountains, southern Bulgaria, was identified from 516 prey specimens. Shrews (52.9% by number, 26.7% by biomass) and rodents (42.1% N, 71.5% B) were prevalent. Among them, White-toothed shrews, Criocidura sp., (45.3% N, 21.4% B) was the most numerous prey genus. Mice, Apodemus sp., (15.7% N, 29% B) contributed with the largest share to the food biomass due to high predation of Striped field mice, A. agrarius, (12.2% B). The proportions of forest species in diet (Apodemus sp, Sorex sp., and dormice liridae) increased with the higher proportion of forest habitats (forests and shrublands cover more than 25% of the area) in most Barn Owl hunting territories in southern Bulgaria.
Keywords
diet variations, food spectrum, opportunistic predator, pellet analysis, small mammals, Strandzha Mountains.