Barn Owl
The Barn Owl has almost world-wide distribution, being absent from only the high elevations. Some Pacific islands introduced the bird for rat control. Inhabitants provided nest boxes in Malaysian palm nut groves for the same purpose. You will find Barn Owl all over the US, its numbers are particularly high in California and the Southwest. Farmers and ranchers become increasingly attracted to the barn owl's ability to control rodents better than traps, poison, or cats and at no cost. Barn Owl boxes can be safely hung and educating farmers is essential to the importance of these birds on their lands and monitoring their nesting successes and failures.
The Barn Owl inhabits all four of the Southwestern deserts. The Barn Owl is a grassland species and it relies on open fields for hunting. If the owl does migrate it moves only a short distance. Barn owls in agreeable habitats produce large broods once or twice a year. Each young owl as it nears maturity will eat the equivalent of a dozen mice per day. Barn Owls are more nocturnal than other owls. They wait until dark before starting out to hunt, except when the demands of their young may start them hunting at twilight. Normally, before daylight, they retire to some shadowed or enclosed area in an old building, a hollow tree or a hole in a rocky cliff and remain there drowsily inactive all day.
When hunting at night, the Barn Owl sweeps the fields on silent wings catching its prey with its long, slender claws. It prefers small mammals but occasionally inwinter when mice and gophers are scarce, it will take small birds. The owl tears and swallows their prey, bones, skin and all. The indigestible parts form into pellets and disgorged at the roosting area or about the nest.
Their favorite foods are voles, gophers, moles, and rabbits. One of their primary food sources in Eastern states is the Meadow Vole. Other prey depending on their location consists of Short-tailed Voles, some Bank Voles, the Common Shrew, Wood Mice, some Brown Rats, Birds and other small mammals. The adult Barn Owls kills and consumes the equivalent of one large rat or gopher per night. The Owl Rehabilitation Research Foundation, Ontario, Canada, reports that barn owls consume twice as much food for their weight as other owls. The Barn Owl is not fond of the row crops that many farmers grow, like corn
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