Barn Owl - Ecology

Ecology

Tyto alba is nocturnal, as is usual for owls, but it often becomes active shortly before dusk already and can sometimes be seen during the day, when it relocates from a sleeping place it does not like.

This is a bird of open country such as farmland or grassland with some interspersed woodland, usually below 2,000 m ASL but occasionally as high as 3,000 m ASL in the tropics. This owl prefers to hunt along the edges of woods. It has an effortless wavering flight as it quarters pastures or similar hunting grounds. Like most owls, the Barn Owl flies silently; tiny serrations on the leading edges of its flight feathers help to break up the flow of air over its wings, thereby reducing turbulence and the noise that accompanies it. The behaviour and ecological preferences may differ slightly even among neighboring subspecies, as shown in the case of the European T. a. guttata and T. a. alba which probably evolved, respectively, in allopatric glacial refugia in southeastern Europe, and in Iberia or southern France.