The relative abundance of small mammal species detected from Common Barn-owl pellets reflects the landscape structure and habitat pattern of the owl’s hunting area, but it is also affected by the size of the collected pellet sample and the size of the supposed hunting area. The questions arise: how many pellets should be collected and analyzed as well as how large hunting area should be taken into consideration in order to reach the best correspondence between the owl’s prey composition and the distribution of habitats preferred by small mammals preyed in supposed hunting areas? For this study, we collected 1045 Common Barn-owl pellets in a village in southern Hungary. All detected small mammal species were classified into functional groups (guilds) preferring urban, open, forest and wetland habitats. The proportion of functional groups was compared to the proportion of these habitats around the pellet collection site within circles of one, two, and three km radius. Saturation curves showed that at least 300 pellets or ca. 600 mammalian remains are required for the detection of the 19 small mammal species. The share of small mammals detected in the prey and their functional groups according to their habitat preference showed an increasing consistency with the distribution of real habitats in the potential hunting area of a radius of 3 km around the owl’s breeding or resting place.

从普通谷仓猫头鹰颗粒中检测到的小型哺乳动物物种的相对丰度反映了猫头鹰狩猎区域的景观结构和栖息地模式，但它也受到收集的颗粒样本大小和假定狩猎区域大小的影响。问题出现了：应该收集和分析多少颗粒以及应该考虑多大的狩猎区域，以便在猫头鹰的猎物组成与在假定的狩猎区域捕食的小型哺乳动物偏好的栖息地分布之间达到最佳对应关系? 在这项研究中，我们在匈牙利南部的一个村庄收集了 1045 个普通谷仓猫头鹰颗粒。所有检测到的小型哺乳动物物种都被分类为更喜欢城市、开阔、森林和湿地栖息地的功能组（行会）。将功能组的比例与颗粒收集点周围一、二和三公里半径范围内的这些栖息地的比例进行比较。饱和曲线显示，至少 300 个颗粒或 ca。检测19种小型哺乳动物需要600具哺乳动物遗骸。根据栖息地偏好，在猎物及其功能组中检测到的小型哺乳动物的比例与猫头鹰繁殖或休息地周围半径 3 公里的潜在狩猎区域内的真实栖息地分布越来越一致。