Ugh, paparazzi

Sometimes you see a barn and you know it has owls. 

This one is airy, with many escape  routes. As we walked to the door, a barn owl (Tyto alba) silently flew out.

A helpful person had put up an owl box. Owls had accepted it. Not recently, judging by the size of the charnel scatter of debris below, full of fragile white bones of rodents.

An owlet looked out. I think it was worried, maybe horrified. But it wasn't too frightened to stare.

Not all barns are suitable for owl nesting. When a barn is otherwise good but has no owl box, owls may nest on a corner between rafters.

This old barn is so great that I think it would have an owl nest even without the box. It's made of solid beams and planks, strongly joined.

Before there were barns, these owls nested in natural places like holes in trees. Humans have reduced the number of trees (and many humans object to trees with holes in them, with the notion that such trees are diseased, unsound, and liable to drop heavy limbs onto humans including small beloved children running through the park to raise awareness for kidney disease).
 

However, we have put up barns which can be nested in. Barns attract rodents, useful to barn owls, since an owl family may eat more than a thousand in a year.

Barn owls evolved hunting in meadows and along forest edges and nesting in trees. Some still do so, but others hunt on agricultural land and nest in agricultural buildings. We're not completely useless to owls.
  

Even if we give them the creeps. 

Comments

[Fred Wickham]

Nice story.

[Fawn]

Owls! So cute!

[Susan McCarthy]

And they give us the word owlish.

[Maggie Rufo]

Hi Susan, I just found your blog after reading today's article in the Chron about the oild bird rescue. I love this blog and what you write about. Also, have your book When Elephants Weep. I love this entry about barn owls - they are a big love of mine. I volunteer with the Hungry Owl Project in Marin.

[Susan McCarthy]

Thank you, Maggie.

The Hungry Owl Project sounds great -- what a good name. More owls, that's what I want!