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Barn Owl (Tyto alba)

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Description: The barn owl is a medium-sized owl with long legs, dark eyes and a round head that lacks ear tufts. The barn owl has a heart-shaped, white face with a white or mostly white underbelly. Their backside and long wings have brown contour feathers. Finally, they have talons for perching on branches and for grasping prey.

Habitat: Barn owls are one of the most widely distributed birds in the world. They can be seen on all continents, except for Antarctica and also on oceanic islands. They live in open areas in order to find prey, including grasslands, marshes, deserts, and fields.

Diet: They have a diet consisting solely of small mammals that dwell on the floor.

Behaviors:
  • They use an aerial dive in order to swoop down and capture prey on the ground
  • They are nocturnal
  • They place nest most commonly in buildings with nests that consist of shredded owl                                   pellets
  • They use sound to capture prey in complete darkness

Miscellaneous:                                                    
 
  • Females have more spots than males and are used as a stimulus to the male
  • There are 46 subspecies of Barn Owl recorded around the world
  • They lay between two and eighteen eggs at a time

Video: This is a video that shows how Barn Owls target their prey by using sound.

Audio