Esmeralda and her food

I don't have too much time before I need to get some sleep but I wanted to post this picture of our newest owl with a transmitter, Esmeralda. She saved our night of tracking last night because we were able to track her from our cars when the weather turned sour and it started misting heavily and then raining. The other saw-whet we are following, Isra, hangs out in the area south of the King's Gap banding station and is quite impossible to track from a car.

Esmeralda, a female Northern Saw-whet Owl
Esmeralda is a second year female, if I remember correctly, and she is holding some prey item in her talons in the photo above. Leave a comment if you think you can help us out by identifying it.