Action Plan: Barn Owl

The Barn Owl (Tyto Alba) is a medium sized owl with a distinctive golden-brown back, white heart shaped face and white under parts. An average barn owl is 35 centimetres in length, with a wingspan of 90 centimetres. They can weight up to 400 grams depending on the time of year and are believed to live for 3 to 4 years although much older owls have been recorded.

The diet of the Barn Owl consists mainly of small mammals such as field voles, common shrew, wood mouse and brown rats. They hunt low in flight over rough grassland but are often seen hunting from exposed perches such as fence posts. Their exceptional hearing and almost silent flight enables them to locate prey by sound alone and approach them undetected. Prey is usually swallowed whole and the parts that can’t be digested such as bones, teeth and fur are regurgitated as a dark, smooth, cylindrical pellet.

The Barn Owl is typically found in low intensity agricultural areas, field margins, mature rough grassland, banks of watercourses, along woodland edges, young tree plantations, hedgerows, fencerows and coastal saltmarsh. A pair of owls require about 20-25 square kilometres of habitat with several suitable roosting sites, such as quiet buildings, tree cavities/hollows or nest boxes. Breeding success depends on the availability of the main prey species which causes significant year to year variation in performance.