How do barn owls hunt and when is the best time to see them?

Molly Toal

Molly works at Lunt Meadows as a Communications and Engagement Officer. Her job combines lots of interesting activities – writing, archaeology and helping others connect with Lunt's nature and heritage. Her favourite animal is the red squirrel.

©Andy Rouse/2020VISION

Communications and Engagement Officer Molly Toal discusses how barn owls hunt and shares tips to increase your chances of seeing these amazing birds in the wild.

There is something special about barn owls. With big, dark eyes and delicate, white feathers, they are amongst our most recognisable and well-known British birds. Throughout history there have been stories and nicknames for barn owls that illustrated people’s feelings towards them at the time, including ghost owl, church owl, screech owl and even demon owl. Their appearance is quite unlike our other owl species, they are silent in flight, and their call is a piercing, eery screech instead of a hoot, so is understandable that people were wary of them. Thankfully, in our modern times, we understand barn owls much better than previous cultures and the birds are now well-liked (as they should be).

Catching a glimpse of a barn owl is real treat, and its unique appearance makes it easy to identify. While most owls are a brown or grey in colour, the barn owl has a mottled grey and buff back, and its underside is a brilliant, pure white. Its face is also white, and heart-shaped, topped off with a pair of dark, mournful eyes.

How do barn owls hunt?

Barn owls are birds of prey, and eat small mammals, likes voles mice, shrews and sometimes rats. Many of the features we find so endearing in barn owls are part of the bird’s adaptation as a brilliant hunter. For starters, those large saucepan-eyes are extremely light-sensitive and drawn to the slightest of movements. Their vision is secondary to their even more amazing sense of hearing though. The barn owl’s cute, heart-shaped face enables it to collect and channel sound towards its ears, hidden within its head feathers. One ear sits higher than the other, enabling the bird to process lots of information quickly, including how far away a noise is and the direction it is travelling in. With such keen senses, a squeak from a vole, or the slight rustle from a shrew scurrying through the grass does not go unnoticed, no matter the time of day.

A barn owl hovering above prey as it hunts in a field — John Bridges

Watching a barn owl hunt is a wonderful sight. The most common technique is ‘quartering’, when a barn owl slowly and deliberately flies in lines above a field, before pausing to hover in the air while it watches a small mammal below. From there, the barn owl will stick out its long legs and swing them in front of its head while pouncing on its prey, using its long talons to grab hold. Sometimes, you might see a barn owl pounce directly from a perch, like a fence post or tree stump, which it does when it is trying to conserve its energy.

Every movement the hunting owl makes, from flapping its wing to dropping onto prey, is done near-silently, thanks to the owl’s soft feathers. Hairs on the flight feathers help air to flow smoothly across the wings, and the foremost wing-feathers each have a row of tiny hooks on the edge of them that deaden the sound of air hitting the wing in flight.

Where to go owl watching

Barn owls are birds of the countryside, favouring farms and open landscapes. You won’t find them in woodlands or urban areas, but they don’t mind nesting close to people in old barns or even in specially placed owl boxes in rural gardens. The habitats they hunt in tend to be rough, open grassland, hay meadows or wildflower meadows, where small mammals like voles and shrews, can be found in abundance. You will sometimes see barn owls hunting along hedgerows too, where mice are more likely to live. Owls do not necessarily hunt where they roost and will happily fly off to their prefered hunting spots for a tasty meal.

Being famously nocturnal, barns owls tend to do most of their hunting at night, and they are commonly spotted within the hours either side of dawn and dusk. Even so, it is not unusual to see barn owls flying during the middle of the day, especially in summer when they have chicks to feed.

A barn owl flies in the daylight while two walkers watch from nearby — Barn Owl at Lunt Meadows by D.Jay Green

If you want to be tactical about owl watching, a good plan is to pick the morning after a night of heavy rain and wind. That is because the owls’ hunting adaptations are not suited to such bad weather – their feathers are not particularly waterproof, while howling winds interfere with their ability to pinpoint prey using their hearing. Once there is a break in the weather, the owls will venture out for some much-needed breakfast.

We are fortunate in our region to manage a number of nature reserves suitable for barn owls, with Lunt Meadows in Sefton, being famous among the north west’s nature lovers and photographers for these amazing owls. Sightings are almost daily with up to four barn owls at a time seen swooping across the reserve and neighbouring fields.

Since leasing the land in 2012, Lancashire Wildlife Trust has been working hard to create a brilliant mosaic of wetland and grassland habitat at Lunt Meadows, ideal for small mammals, and therefore barn owls, to thrive in. All this is thanks to the hard work of our volunteers and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Through their generosity, the team at Lunt are also able to put on guided wildlife walks, including owl-spotting evenings, ideal for locals and the public to learn more about the wonderful wildlife at home on the nature reserve.

To find out when our next guided walk is, visit the What’s on page.