Barn Owl Hunting
In fact only a third of barn owls survive long enough to reach breeding age with predation by larger birds starvation during lean winters and car collisions all posing a serious challenge to barn owls.
Barn owl hunting. Watching a barn owl hunting is an amazing experience. Insects and small birds may be snatched in mid air sometimes after being flushed from the cover of trees or bushes by the owl. An owl s talons like those of most birds of prey can seem massive in comparison to the body size outside of flight.
The barn owl is nocturnal over most of its range but in great britain and some pacific islands it also hunts by day. The larger barn owl tyto alba needs a force of 30 n to release its prey and one of the largest owls the great horned owl bubo virginianus needs a force over 130 n to release prey in its talons. Subscribe to bbc earth for more amazing animal videos http bit ly bbcearthsub.
Lanky with a whitish face chest and belly and buffy upperparts this owl roosts in hidden quiet places during the day. Barn owls specialise in hunting animals on the ground and nearly all of their food consists of small mammals which they locate by sound their hearing being very acute. Barn owls are mainly nocturnal but may hunt before dusk and around dawn when feeding young and in daylight in winter.
You can find them by listening for their eerie raspy calls quite unlike the hoots of other owls. Barn owls have excellent adaptations for successful hunting and learn to do so almost entirely by their own instincts when they are 8 14 weeks old. Find out about roosting and nesting places.
Owls that catch fish may skim over water snatching fish on the fly pel s fishing owl or the may perch at the water s edge grabbing any fish or crayfish that surfaces nearby blakiston s fish owl. Owls can adapt their hunting techniques depending on the type of prey. Ghostly pale and normally strictly nocturnal barn owls are silent predators of the night world.
Get the definitive guide. Barn owls have been found in chimneys and even down mine shafts. The barn owl conservation handbook has a whole chapter on barn owl ecology.
Check out our hunting and feeding page. This beautiful nocturnal animal looks like a ghost descending on its prey. Captive barn owls have lived for as long as 25 years which is likely the barn owl s true lifespan but the majority of wild barn owls don t survive more than 10 years.
They are generally most active at dusk and dawn typically leaving their roost site and commuting across unsuitable habitat to reach a favoured hunting area such as a patch of rough grassland. By night they hunt on buoyant wingbeats in open fields and meadows.
