Thursday, February 02, 2012

Possum Pellets

In the comment section of an earlier post, I mentioned the "possum pellets" that I frequently find in the birdfeeders, letting me know that an opossum has been enjoying the largesse I put out for the birds.  I finally remembered to get a photo....


The main photo is really too busy to be able to see the pellets clearly (they seem much less "camouflaged" in real life), so I zoomed in to let you see the pellets up close.  The closeup is a little fuzzy, but gives a better feel of what you'll see in the feeder.



17 comments:

Gardener on Sherlock Street said...

Do the birds care?
Yuck.

Gaia Gardener: said...

The birds don't seem to care. And the owner of the backyard wildlife store said the pellets were actually regurgitated bits of sunflower seed shell (rather like a mini owl pellet), not feces. I never could find any information about whether they were actually regurgitated bits, but the opossum feces shown on various websites seemed to look much different - rather like cat droppings.

Gardener on Sherlock Street said...

Interesting. When people say someone "eats like a bird," I don't think they had taken this into consideration. Ha!

Unknown said...

I too finally discovered a young possum in my feeder that was leaving behind the pellets.

ALMNH Collections Manager said...

Thanks for the ID! I too have these pellets at my feeder.

Pat said...

For the past three mornings I have been finding these "pellets" in my feeder, also. I thought at first it was Owl pellets until I actually caught the little booger sitting in my feeder about 1am this morning eating to his hearts content! But, I did not know they "regurgitated" like that. So glad I found this blog - mystery solved!

Pat said...

The past three mornings I had found these "pellets" in my feeder, also. I had thought they were owl pellets, too, until I caught the little booger in my feeder at 1am this morning. I had no idea they regurgitated like that, tho. Mystery solved!

Gaia Gardener: said...

Pat, Thanks for stopping by and letting me know that this post was helpful. Did you know that possums were tick-eating machines? They are great to have around, as they destroy almost all of the ticks that attach to them. I've come to think of possums as "tick vacuums"!

Jonathan Hendry said...

Ah, thanks for this. I've been kind of grossed out about how the possums seem to poop where they are eating. I guess this is better.

Elise Logan said...

Thank you for this! We have the same pellets - have for weeks - but couldn't figure out what was making them. Last night between midnight and 1am we saw the little possum in the feeder, and this morning the pellets were there again. This is the first place I could find confirmation of our experience - so thanks!

Unknown said...

I saved a baby possum and it's about a month and a half I let it have some chicken then all of a sudden it started kind of gaging and it threw up,twice now,I washed her mouth out. It kind of looks like a white pellet. It scared me I wouldn't hurt it for the world, she is kind of my buddy now. I am so glade this came up when I was trying to find out.

Unknown said...

Opossums do not regurgitate anything like this. When they throw up it is typically due to parasites and they re-eat whatever comes up. Once they been wormed the regurgitation stops. What they are doing is chewing the seeds and spitting out the hulls in a wad. They do the same thing with grape skins and other fibrous foods. I am very interested to hear you are finding them In Your feeders! This is really important information to know. The captive opossum diet is extremely difficult to match what they eat in the wild and MBD metabolic bone disease is quite common. Thank you for sharing this, we are always trying to help adjust the diet to better match what nutrients they need and this is great information for us to have 🙌🏼

BHogan said...

I had seen these on my deck after an opossum had been eating some spilled sunflower seeds. I didn’t know if it was something that had been mixed with the seeds but could see it looked like bits of grass. After the second night of seeing the opossum on my deck eating more sunflower seeds and finding a lot more of the pellets, I googled “opossum pellets” and this came up. So glad to know what it is.

Unknown said...

I had exactly the same thing show up in my squirrel feeder this week. Suspected that's what it was and finally remembered to look online and viola! Guess we'll have to start bring them in again at night.

Anonymous said...

This is so helpful. This has been a mystery for me for months. Do you think it harms the birds eating around it?

Unknown said...

Thank you for solving my mystery! It is now 2022, and every morning I've been finding balls of partially chewed bird seed in my feeder that resides on my porch railing. As other posters here have said, they are reminiscent of owl pellets, but are not made of bone, hair, and feathers. The photos that are posted in this thread look exactly like the pellets in my feeder, so mystery solved!!!

Larry’s animal safari said...

I also saw a visiting opossum spit out pellets.