Barn Owl

Identification

The Barn Owl is the one owl you can identify from silhouette alone: a white, heart-shaped facial disc with no ear tufts, small black eyes instead of the usual yellow, and a lanky, long-legged build. Upperparts mix golden-buff, grey and white in fine grey vermiculations, while the underparts run from pure white to pale buff and may carry a scattering of dark spots. Caught in a car's headlights, the pale underside and white face make it look almost ghostly. There is little confusion risk: no other owl shares that combination of a heart-shaped face and dark eyes.

Strictly nocturnal, it hunts by hearing rather than sight, quartering low over grass on a slow, buoyant, moth-like flight and dropping onto prey it has located without ever seeing it. Its ears sit at different heights on the skull, which lets it pinpoint a vole's rustle to within a few degrees in complete darkness. Voles make up the bulk of the diet, with shrews, mice and the occasional small bird or frog. The voice is unforgettable and misleading: a long, drawn-out, hoarse screech, plus hisses, snoring and tongue-clicking at the nest. It never hoots.

Look for Barn Owls at dusk along field margins, ditches and rough grassland where voles are plentiful. They roost and nest in barn lofts, church towers, hollow trees and nest boxes, and the giveaway is a pile of black, shiny pellets plus white splash below the entrance. Listen for the screech rather than searching visually, and scan field edges slowly — that white underside shows up long before the bird's shape does.