You’re out in a field after dark. You see the outline of a barn in the distance. Stars twinkle overhead. All is quiet and calm. Suddenly, a shriek tears through the night, breaking the silence and sending shivers of fear down your spine!
What was that? You look around and spot a white shape silently floating in the sky and plunging down to earth, dark spots where eyes should be. You rush away to warn your family about the ghost you just witnessed.
Or do you?
Let’s reimagine this scenario. You’re out in a field after dark. You see the outline of a barn in the distance. Stars twinkle overhead. All is quiet and calm. You notice a small, light-colored shape emerge from a gap in the barn and take out binoculars for a closer look. The shape turns out to be a medium-sized bird about the size of a crow. But the coloring is different. You keep watching.
It perches there for a moment, turning its white, heart-shaped face toward you. It snaps its beak several times, making a metallic clicking sound like tapping a spoon on a bowl. Then it spreads its wings wide and takes flight. It could be a barn owl!
Words to know
Crevice: A narrow opening or fissure, especially in a rock or wall.
Emerge: To move out or away from something and come into view.
Scurry: To move hurriedly with short, quick steps.
With its rounded wings spread 3 feet to 4 feet wide, you can see the two-toned coloring. The colors are like a piece of toast dusted with cinnamon sugar — white underwings, belly and face with brownish-orange feathers on top. The white feathers seem to glow against the dark night sky.
A shriek tears through the night, breaking the silence and sending shiver of excitement down your spine. That call confirms what you thought — you're definitely watching a barn owl!
It flies in loops in the sky, lower and lower, almost seeming to float. Turning its head, it listens for the scurry of rodents, like mice or rats, or maybe a vole, shrew or rabbit in the field, before plunging down to earth. Dinner!
With prey held tight in its talons, the barn owl returns to the barn. Is it in for the night, or will it emerge to hunt again? You rush away to tell your family about the barn owl you just witnessed.
The stories above may have been fiction, but facts were peppered in. Want to know more?
Barn owls look different than other owls.
Barn owls stand out among the owls of Will County with their distinctive look. They stand about 1 foot to 1 1/2 tall, fitting in between screech owls and great horned owls on the owl height chart. They weigh about 1 pound, or as much as a family-sized bag of M&Ms.
They don’t just scream.
Barn owls may be known for their piercing call, but they make other sounds too, like an ick, ick, ick while flying. Listen:
Barn owls have the best hearing of any animal ever tested.
While it’s true that owls have excellent night vision, barn owls rely mostly on their hearing. Their ear cavities are offset, which means that one is higher up and one is farther forward.
Not only can they hear prey scurrying below, or bats flying in the sky, they can almost instantly tell the direction, height and distance of who’s making the sound. You would be the champion of your sport if you had owl ears and could anticipate and react to your opponents’ moves!
Barn owls like a roof over their heads.
You probably predicted this from their name: Barn owls like to live in barns. But they will also build nests in other buildings, church steeples, silos, caves and tree cavities.
Once their house hunting leads them to the perfect crevice, nest building begins. They will shred their own pellets and form them into a cozy cup shape. Cozy if you don’t mind some tiny bones poking you or a little rodent skull staring at you while you sleep! They must not mind because barn owls often roost in their nests all year, not just while incubating their clutches of two to eight eggs or raising owlets like most birds.
The neighborhood matters.
Not just any cavity or crevice will do, though. It has to be surrounded by the right habitat. Barn owls prefer wide-open landscapes they can fly over while hunting. Picture fields, prairies, marshes or grasslands. Unfortunately, these habitats are harder and harder to come by as neighborhoods continue to expand. That means barn owls don’t have places to nest or hunt.
You can welcome barn owls.
You may not have a barn where you live, but you could build a nest box just the right size and shape for barn owl. But before you start, ask yourself if you have the right habitat for hunting nearby too.
Make sure you put the box up well before their nesting season (mid-February to mid-July), and only watch from a distance because barn owls like their privacy. Even if the habitat and nesting spot are perfect, they won’t stay if they don’t feel safe. Get directions to make your own barn owl nest box.
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