Heading to the city. Diet selection of urban breeding Desert Eagle Owls (Bubo ascalaphus) in Hurghada, Egypt

摘要

The diet selection of Desert Eagle Owl (Bubo ascalaphus) was investigated in the outskirts of Hurghada, the Egyptian Western Desert, and the results were used to test the main hypotheses describing the urbanization process of these birds. The diet primarily comprised mammals (78%) and birds (11.3%), with a small proportion of arthropods (9.2%) and reptiles (2.1%). The diet had a low diversity and was dominated by the two mammal species and a temporally abundant migrant bird species. The mammalian component of the diet is the most important in terms of biomass (91.7%), with the Norway Rat (Rattus norvegicus) dominating both by number (66.1%) and by biomass (89.1%). The results suggest that in the urban environments of Hurghada the Desert Eagle Owl is an opportunistic feeder, relying on exotic mammals. The major driving effect for its new habitat choice is the abundance of the main prey.