Barn Owl: On the Night Shift!

It’s close to midnight… swirling fog… deathly silence… not a soul in sight. It’s been like this ever since the old farmhouse fell into disrepair.

Unlikely though it may seem, the feeling that someone’s watching, creeps up on you, making you turn your head to look at the black, gaping mouth of the loft, just over the barn door. What you see makes you cringe.

Not convinced that it could only be the setting playing tricks with your imagination, you hasten your pace, only to pull up short when the eerie silence is shattered by a piercing screech.

But it is not just the setting and your imagination running wild - it was you who startled the virtually harmless and adorable Barn Owl!

Also called Death Owl, Ghost Owl, Monkey-faced Owl, Night Owl and Church Owl, the common Barn Owl is the quintessential ‘home bird’ on the one hand, and a global citizen on the other as it is found on all continents except Antarctica.

With large eyes adapted for seeing in the dark and with acute hearing, it flies low and silently above open land till its ears pinpoint unwary prey in the darkness. The owl then swoops down, swinging its legs forward while spreading its claws to grasp and kill the prey at first contact.

The owl swallows the prey whole but later regurgitates indigestible parts like bones, fur or feathers as smooth, black pellets which accumulate in piles beneath their roosts.

An adult barn owl feeds on as much as three rats a day, obviously making it the farmer’s friend.

The male owl chases the female of his dreams (he does sleep in the daytime!) showing her his flying skills under the stars. He also makes loud wing claps and calls finally feeding her after the show. Once they have their ‘roll-in-the-hay’ (that’s what barns are for – hey, I'm talking about the hay!) they usually remain partners for life.

Well, they don’t build a nest. Why should they, when they have the whole loft to themselves, anyway?

The female lays one egg every two or three days, each of them hatching on different days though within 33 days. Sadly, the older owlets are fed first and so when food is scarce, the younger ones die of starvation only to be eaten up by their older siblings.

Barn owl numbers are declining mainly due to modern farming which has done away with barns or converted them into houses. Also, grasslands are being turned into farmland, thus reducing the number of rodents, their primary source of food. Adaptable birds that they are, they seek out new haunts - unused belfries and church spires, in keeping with their aliases.

Copyright © 2007 Noël Gama
www.noelgama.com