Chapter 10 of 23

Courtship and Pairing Up

How Barn Owls choose and keep a mate

About 4 minute read

By late winter, a Barn Owl's thoughts turn to romance. The whole process is quiet, affectionate and, for the male, very hard work. It is also one of the most interesting parts of the year to watch, and if you are lucky enough to have a camera in a nest box, it can be a real treat.

Finding each other

Many Barn Owls already have a partner from the year before, and for them there is nothing much to find. The pair may simply start roosting closer together as the days lengthen. Owls without a mate have to get to work. In spring, unpaired birds take to the air and screech over and over again, often for many minutes, and sometimes for hours on end, in the hope that someone will answer. In a well populated area, the neighbours are probably known already, and a song flight is likely to get a reply. In a quiet area, it can be a lonely business.

Young birds sometimes find a partner in their first autumn, moving into a site left empty when one of the old pair died. Others take longer. Whatever happens, each pair is usually made up of a mixture of experienced birds and youngsters, and the youngsters are often a little later starting their breeding.

Visiting the nest site

When a pair is thinking about nesting, they check out possible sites together. The female usually goes in first and has a good look around, and the male often waits outside and may only peep in briefly after she has gone. The female usually takes the lead, and a pair will often go back to a spot they have used before if it is still available.

Gifts and grooming

Courtship is all about food and touch. The male becomes the main provider, and in the last ten days or so before egg laying, he brings all the food for both of them, which can mean ten to seventeen prey animals in a day. It is a genuine test, because the early spring is the leanest time of the year for prey. His success matters. A male who cannot provide enough may see the breeding delayed, or even abandoned.

Meanwhile, the pair spend hours sitting close together, sometimes only a few centimetres apart, preening each other with their bills and chattering softly. In the pairs I have watched, the female is usually the more active groomer. She works away at a rather meek looking male, who ends up a bit henpecked. This small imbalance can be a nice early clue when you are trying to work out which bird is which. At dusk, the pair may chase each other in and out of the nest place, screeching wildly.

The female becomes less active as the eggs approach. She rests for longer and longer in the nest, and she will call to the male for food, using a louder version of the begging call of a chick. She puts on weight in preparation for the marathon of laying and sitting. Mating becomes frequent at this stage, particularly when the male arrives with a prey item, and it goes on right through the laying and incubation period.

Are they really faithful?

Generally, yes. Barn Owls are usually monogamous, and pairs keep together for as long as both survive. If a mate dies, the survivor often finds a new one fairly quickly, sometimes within weeks. Occasionally a male will breed with two females, especially when food is plentiful, and now and again two females have laid in the same nest.

Males can be quite protective. The only time you will see a Barn Owl attack another Barn Owl is when a strange male enters an occupied nest. This is mate guarding, and it makes evolutionary sense. A male that invests two months of hard hunting in a family wants to be certain the young are his.

Read more: Barn Owl Mating on the website.