Chapter 1 of 23

Meet the Barn Owl

The pale ghost of the British countryside

About 4 minute read

If you drive along a quiet country lane at dusk, there is a good chance you will one day see something pale and silent drift across the road in front of you. It is bigger than you expect and whiter than anything else out at that hour, and it is gone almost before you have time to say the words out loud. That is a Barn Owl, and most people who see one never forget it.

The Barn Owl is one of the most loved birds in Britain, and it is easy to see why. It has a soft, heart shaped face, dark eyes that look like drops of ink, and a body that seems to glow when a headlight or a torch catches it. It flies without a sound. It hunts in the half light over rough grass and field edges, and it raises its family in old barns, hollow trees and nest boxes, which is where its name comes from.

This guide is a long, friendly walk through everything a Barn Owl does, from how it hears a vole under a blanket of grass to how the owlets grow up in the nest. It focuses mainly on our own British birds, because they live in a rather special corner of the species' range, right at the cool northern edge. Where it helps, I have added a few notes about Barn Owls in other parts of the world too.

What is in a name?

The scientific name of the Barn Owl is Tyto alba. It was given in 1769 by an Italian doctor and naturalist called Giovanni Scopoli. The name is a lovely bit of plain speaking. Alba is the Latin word for white, and Tyto comes from an old Greek word for an owl, one that is thought to copy the sound the birds make. So the name simply means white owl.

The birds have picked up plenty of everyday names too. People have called them white owls, screech owls, church owls and ghost owls, and you can tell a lot about their habits from those names. In other languages the story is the same. The Dutch call the bird the church owl, the French know it as the owl of the belfries, and the Portuguese call it the owl of the towers. All over Europe it has been the bird you find in the loft of an old building.

Britain's Barn Owl at a glance

Why they matter to so many of us

Barn Owls have a way of getting under your skin. Part of it is how they look. Part of it is how they behave, because they are easy to watch when you know where to stand and they carry on with their lives without seeming to mind. Part of it is what they tell us about the countryside. A Barn Owl needs a lot of rough, tussocky grass full of voles, a dry and quiet place to sleep, and a safe place to nest. When a Barn Owl is doing well in a valley, it usually means the wildlife in that valley is doing well too.

They are also a bird with a story. Barn Owls were once a common sight around British farms, and then their numbers slid badly through the twentieth century as the countryside changed. Since then, thousands of people have put up nest boxes, left strips of rough grass along field edges and looked out for owls on the roads. Numbers have improved, though the picture is far from simple, and you will find out why in the later chapters.

If you have never seen one, this guide should help you know where to look. If you already love them, I hope it gives you a few surprises. Let's start by working out where the Barn Owl sits in the big family tree of owls.