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The humble barn owl. Her Latin name is Tytonidae tyto alba. You can't see her ears, yet she can hear a mouse rustling through the leaves hundreds of feet away, pinpoint its location, and swoop in for the kill.
The barn owl's heart-shaped face is curved into a bowl by the feathers surrounding it. She does not have the typical ear tufts associated with many species of owl. She can move her facial and head feathers to increase sound reception from a certain direction or to diminish her interception of loud noises, to direct sound toward her ear canals or away from them. Location of prey is determined with great precision by the barn owl's ears, which are situated asymmetrically, with one near the forehead and the other level with the nostrils.
The sound the barn owl produces is not the hooting of other owls. She can produce soft clicks and clucks, a rough hissing sound, and she can produce a terrifying scream, and everything in between. If barn owls are threatened near their nests they do a strange dance in which they spread their wings, wave their heads to and fro above their feet and produce a loud, piercing, hissing scream. This practice of waving their heads over their feet is called "toe-dusting". Because she is completely nocturnal, never appearing during the day, her white face and heart stopping scream can scare the living daylights out of you!
Hunting is done from a perch that is open and makes her stalking flight a clear shot. Using her incredible sense of hearing she can hunt in complete darkness- which is what she prefers. She perches near meadows and open fields listening for rodents and smaller birds. 95% of her prey are field mice and meadow voles, so she is a valuable associate for the farmer. Nesting boxes are readily accepted and now are produced for sale so that these owls can be lured to locations where pest control is needed. Nesting site selection by the birds begins around December in many parts of the U.S. Adult barn owls normally eat one rodent a night, but the chicks eat two or three so a family of seven can reduce the rodent population by 3000 in one breeding season.
The barn owl is medium sized for an owl, and even medium is an impressive size. She ranges in size from 14 to 20" (35-51 cm) and has a wingspread of 42 to 44" (1.0-1.1 m). It is a dimorphic species wherein the sexes can be visually determined. The underside of the male's wings are white, while the female's are a creamy color with gray flecks. The body feathers of both male and female are gold with gray flecks.
Barn owls become sexually mature about 18 months of age. They will lay anywhere from three to eleven eggs, with the larger quantities occurring in years when prey is plentiful. On one occasion a nest of 27 young was reported, with all surviving to fledge, although this is quite unusual. They usually raise two clutches of eggs a year, with the female sitting on the nest and the male feeding her. They do not build their own nests. They aren't picky about nesting sites and raise their young in tree cavities or buildings with high holes in them, such as churches and silos. While awaiting the hatching of her eggs, the female is defensive of her territory, but if frightened badly enough to desert, she may not return. However, after the chicks are hatched, a parent that is frightened away is highly likely to return. As the chicks reach fledgling age in April, the parents spend more and more time outside the nest.
The barn owl is found on every continent in the world except for Antarctica but it prefers lowland and southern regions where it is not as cold. Despite a possible life span of ten years, the life span of a typical barn owl is barely two years. Only about 40% of them live beyond the first year. They often die prematurely from pesticides, starvation, human poaching, accidents with vehicles, fences and power lines, and, frequently by attacks from the Great Horned Owl. In addition, barn owl habitat is being destroyed by commercialization of farming methods. It is listed as endangered in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin and threatened in Nebraska, North and South Dakota and Minnesota.
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