These seven baby Barn Owls were hatched out in a nest box on Jimmy Jackson’s property in Bee County. The babies hiss loudly at intruders. Since the mother Barn Owl begins incubation as soon as the first egg is laid, the eggs hatch a few days apart. Thus the young are of different ages. At least one here is nearly ready to fledge, and the others still have varying amounts of down. The one on the far right is probably the youngest owlet in the brood. Jimmy Jackson photo.
Barn Owls Are Not Your Typical Owls
Got mice? You won’t if you have a Barn Owl family on your property. Barn Owls, unlike other kinds of owls, have “a heavy preference for rats and mice.” One Barn Owl can down 2,000 mice a year! A family of these owls easily will eat 8,000 rodents annually.
There are two groups of birds in the owl family: the Barn Owls (Tytonidae) and the Typical Owls (Strigidae). Barn Owls (and there are considered to be eleven species worldwide in this group) differ slightly from the Strigidae in their skeletal structure. Their legs are longer, their necks are shorter and do not pivot as fully as in the Typical Owls. The facial disk of stiff feathers, centered about the eyes, is somewhat heart-shaped. Barn Owls have large round heads with no ear tufts and dark, forward-facing eyes. This gives them a characteristic look that many people call “monkey-faced.”
Barn Owls have keen hearing and can hunt as well by ear as by sight. Studies at Cornell University showed that they can hear a mouse’s heartbeat. Even in total darkness, they can catch prey simply by listening for it. Their ears, hidden under the feathers at the edges of the facial disk, are asymmetrically placed on their heads. This gives them the ability to pinpoint the source of a minute sound with great accuracy.
In addition to being remarkable predators on what we consider vermin, Barn Owls frequently take up residence near humans. They nest in old barns, deer blinds, church towers, dilapidated buildings and occasionally in a hollow tree. And they like to hunt near human habitation as well, taking rodents by night in farmyards, fields and pastures.
Given their preference for open country around human habitations, and tendency to nest in some sort of cavity, it is relatively easy to attract a pair of Barn Owls to your property. Most people build, or buy, a nest box sized for Barn Owls. This box should have a minimum floor space of 12 X 12 inches, although I think bigger might be better, given these owls’ large families. The box needs to be about 16 inches deep with a 6 inch entrance hole placed just a few inches above the floor (so the young owls can get out.) Nest boxes should have ventilation holes in the walls just below the roof, and drainage holes in the floor. It is a good idea to put a couple of inches of wood shavings in the bottom of the nest cavity as the owls don’t add any nesting materials of their own.
But Barn Owls are not too picky. Give them adequate space in a sheltered location out of the reach of raccoons and cats, and the owls will move in. In one nest in an old water tower in New Jersey, two men named J. A. Potter and J. A. Gillespie, first heard loud hissing noises coming from somewhere within. They finally located the nest in a hole in in the floor of the structure. They wrote: “Crowding back as far to the rear as possible, were five downy white objects, partly covered by an adult bird—undoubtedly the female. She had not budged from her duty, while the male had left when he suspected trouble. Evidently blinded by the flashlight, she stared with a most human expression. The nest cavity was approximately twenty inches deep, fifteen inches wide and eight inches long, the sides being formed by vertical floor beams, and the top and bottom by the floor and the ceiling of the room below.”
This past year in Bee County, local birder Jimmy Jackson decided to put up a nest box in his old barn. The dimensions of his box were roughly two feet by two feet by two feet, with an entrance eight inches in diameter. A pair of owls happily moved in and proceeded to produce a brood of three young owls this past spring. The mouse population must have been high this summer because the pair immediately laid a second clutch of eggs. Now seven owlets are just about to fledge from Jimmy’s nest box.
The seven baby Barn Owls raise a ruckus with their loud hissing, whenever Jimmy checks on them. It is not a bird-like sound. See his video of these owlets at https://youtu.be/HMpaxGkJ1zo and hear them for yourself!
In addition to the hissing and snoring sounds given by Barn Owls when cornered, they also utter vocalizations on the wing while hunting. “The voice of Barn Owls is particularly impressive and, when heard at close quarter, is long remembered. Potter and Gillespie described it as ‘hair-raising’ and ‘blood-curdling’ – so much so, in fact, that it sent icy shivers down the spines of the two men!” This unearthly shriek, long and drawn-out, has been described by some individuals as like a woman’s scream. Others hearing it think it is the sound of some other animal, like the cry of a mountain lion. I suspect the Barn Owl is the actual source of the “screech” attributed to Screech Owls which produce a soft, purring trill instead of a screech.
So if you hear something making eerie noises in the night, go looking for a Barn Owl. In the dark, their faces and undersides reflect white, giving them yet another nickname: Ghost Owls. And if you do see one of these ghostly hunters, consider putting up a nest box in your area. You may be rewarded with a serious reduction in rodents!
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