American Barn Owl Life History

Habitat

American Barn Owls live in open habitats, including grasslands, deserts, marshes, agricultural fields, strips of forest, woodlots, ranchlands, brushy fields, and suburbs and cities. They nest in tree cavities, caves, barns, and other buildings. In the Andes they occur as high as 13,000 feet elevation.

Food

American Barn Owls eat mostly small mammals, particularly rats, mice, voles, lemmings, and other rodents; also shrews, bats, and rabbits. Most of the prey they eat are active at night, so squirrels and chipmunks are relatively safe from these owls. They occasionally eat birds such as starlings, blackbirds, and meadowlarks. Nesting American Barn Owls sometimes store dozens of prey items at the nest site while they are incubating to feed the young once they hatch.

Nesting

Nest Placement

American Barn Owls put their nests in holes in trees, cliff ledges and crevices, caves, burrows in river banks, and in many kinds of human structures, including barn lofts, church steeples, houses, nest boxes, haystacks, and even drive-in movie screens.

Nest Description

The female makes a simple nest of her own regurgitated pellets, shredded with her feet and arranged into a cup. Unlike most birds, owls may use their nest sites for roosting throughout the year. Nest sites are often reused from year to year, often by different owls.

Nesting Facts

Behavior

American Barn Owls fly slowly over open fields at night or dusk with slow wingbeats and a looping, buoyant flight. They use their impressive hearing, aided by their satellite-dish-shaped faces, to locate mice and other rodents in the grass, often in complete darkness. These owls are usually monogamous and mate for life, although there are some reports of males with more than one mate. Males attract their mates with several kinds of display flights, including a “moth flight” where he hovers in front of a female for several seconds, his feet dangling. He also displays potential nest sites by calling and flying in and out of the nest. After the pair forms, the male brings prey to the female (often more than she can consume), beginning about a month before she starts laying eggs. American Barn Owls defend the area around their nests, but don’t defend their hunting sites; more than one pair may hunt on the same fields.

Conservation

American Barn Owls are difficult to count because they're nocturnal and secretive, so population sizes are hard to estimate. Owing in part to this difficulty, the North American Breeding Bird Survey could not detect a significant population change between 1966 and 2021, although it appears that their numbers have slightly increased in that time. Prior to the taxonomic split in 2024, Partners in Flight estimated a global breeding population of 3.6 million for Barn Owl (which included American Barn Owl, Eastern Barn Owl, and Western Barn Owl) and rated the species an 8 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a species of low conservation concern. American Barn Owls are threatened by the conversion of agricultural land to urban and suburban development, and the loss of suitable nesting sites such as large, hollow trees and old buildings. Changes to agricultural fields and grasslands can also affect American Barn Owls through changes to their prey populations. American Barn Owls were affected by the use of DDT-related pesticides, and they may be susceptible to poisons used against rodents, since they form a large part of the owls’ diet. Because American Barn Owls hunt by flying low over fields, they are often hit by cars; planting hedgerows alongside roads can help prevent this from happening. Nest boxes (of the correct size) have helped American Barn Owl populations recover in areas where natural nest sites were scarce.

Credits

Chesser, R. T., S. M. Billerman, K. J. Burns, C. Cicero, J. L. Dunn, B. E. Hernández-Baños, R. A. Jiménez, O. Johnson, A. W. Kratter, N. A. Mason, P. C. Rasmussen, and J. V. Remsen, Jr. (2024). Sixty-fifth Supplement to the American Ornithological Society’s Check-list of North American Birds. Ornithology 141:1–20.

Lutmerding, J. A. and A. S. Love. (2020). Longevity records of North American birds. Version 2020. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Bird Banding Laboratory 2020.

Marti, C. D. 1992. Barn Owl. In The Birds of North America, No. 1 (A. Poole, P. Stettenheim, and F. Gill, Eds.). Philadelphia: The Academy of Natural Sciences; Washington D.C.: The American Ornithologists' Union.

Partners in Flight. (2020). Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2020.

Partners in Flight (2023). Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2023.

Roulin, A. (1999). Nonrandom pairing by male Barn Owls (Tyto alba) with respect to a female plumage trait. Behavioral Ecology 10:688-695.

Sauer, J. R., D. K. Niven, J. E. Hines, D. J. Ziolkowski Jr., K. L. Pardieck, J. E. Fallon, and W. A. Link (2019). The North American Breeding Bird Survey, Results and Analysis 1966–2019. Version 2.07.2019. USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, MD, USA.

Sauer, J.R., Link, W.A., and Hines, J.E., 2022, The North American Breeding Bird Survey, Analysis Results 1966 - 2021: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9SC7T11.

Sibley, D. A. (2014). The Sibley Guide to Birds, second edition. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, USA.

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