Chapter 23 of 23

Keep Exploring

Where to go next

About 3 minute read

That is the end of the guide, but I hope it is only the start of your time with Barn Owls. If you would like to keep learning, watch the birds and support the people who look after them, here are the best places to start.

Share this guide

This guide is free, and I would love you to pass it on. You are welcome to share it with friends, schools, clubs, groups and websites, as long as you share the whole guide, unchanged, do not sell it and give credit to BarnOwl.live. It is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 licence. If you would like to use parts of it, or if you spot a mistake, please get in touch through the website.

Copyright 2026 Barn Owl Live. Text and photographs by Barn Owl Live, unless credited.

Sources and further reading

• Bunn, D. S., Warburton, A. B. and Wilson, R. D. S., The Barn Owl (T and A D Poyser, 1982).
• The Barn Owl Trust, Barn Owl Conservation Handbook, and the advice on the Barn Owl Trust website.
• The British Trust for Ornithology, BirdFacts and ringing records, at bto.org.
• Sorby Breck Ringing Group, Barn Owl Report 2026, by Annie Adlington.
• The BTO, ringing scheme pages and research reports on Barn Owl movements, and the Barn Owl Trust pages on juvenile dispersal and on reporting dead or ringed owls.
• The Sussex Ornithological Society, Sussex Barn Owl Group updates on colour ring sightings.
• The Mammal Society, National Owl Pellet Survey, which underlies the diet figures.
• Project Barn Owl, the national survey of the 1990s, for the population estimate.
• The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, for the legal protection of Barn Owls.
• My own observations from the nest boxes and live streams on BarnOwl.live.

Coming soon: printable cheat sheets

I am putting together three one page cheat sheets that you can print, stick on the fridge or take out into the field.

• Male or female? The main clues side by side.
• The Barn Owl year. The life cycle, from courtship to fledging.
• What Barn Owls eat. A simple diet chart.

They will be free to download from the downloads page. To be told the moment they are ready, join the mailing list.

More from me

The BarnOwl.live website has plenty more, most of it based on my own observations. Here are some good places to start.

• What do Barn Owls eat?, my diet article, with a downloadable fact sheet.
• How to tell the sex of a Barn Owl, with clues, photographs and a video podcast.
• Comprehensive Guide to Barn Owls, the shorter article that this guide grew from.
• Barn Owl Hunting and Barn Owl Mating, the articles that go into more detail on those two topics.
• Barn Owl Roosting and Owls Around The World for more on where owls sleep and on the wider owl family.
• The live Barn Owl nest, where you can watch a family at home in real time.
• Free downloadable fact sheets and the Barn Owl quiz.

I stream live Barn Owl nest feeds, along with badgers and foxes, on my YouTube channel, @BarnOwlLive, where you will also find my Talking Wildlife podcasts. My wildlife photographs, often with tips on how I took them, are on Instagram at PeakyWildlife.

Organisations worth knowing

• The Barn Owl Trust, a UK charity dedicated to Barn Owls and their habitat, with a wealth of practical advice on nest boxes, habitat and helping owls in trouble.
• The British Trust for Ornithology, known as the BTO, which runs the national bird ringing scheme and many surveys, and publishes fact sheets on every British bird.
• The Hawk and Owl Trust, which works to conserve birds of prey and owls and runs local projects across Britain.
• The Mammal Society, which coordinates the National Owl Pellet Survey and is a great resource for identifying the small mammals in pellets.

Thank you for reading. Look after your local owls, and enjoy every one you see.