Learning about digestive systems and pellet schedules is interesting (at least for me!) and it is also useful to know when caring for the birds. This week Aldo the American Kestrel wasn’t interested in training and wouldn’t take any food from me. This odd behavior could have multiple explanations. Did he suddenly decide to boycott quail? Was he overweight or sick? Or did he just need to eject a pellet? Soon enough, he opened his beak. With a little cough, he shook his head and flung this tiny pellet at my arm. He simply had to empty out his digestive system to make room for more food.
Occasionally Aldo’s pellet isn’t a pellet at all. Sometimes he coughs up a few pieces of gravel. Oddly enough, this is a normal behavior, especially for falcons that often pick around feathers, fur, and bones on their prey. Without these materials to form a pellet, falcons replace them by ingesting small stones to clean out their crop. Knowing this tidbit of their natural history keeps me from being alarmed whenever it happens with Aldo. Instead I marvel at a bird’s ability to take care of itself, even if it means eating gravel from the floor of the mew.
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