Chapter 5 of 23

The Voice and Body Language of a Barn Owl

Screeches, snores, hisses and a few very odd dances

About 6 minute read

Spend a summer evening near a Barn Owl nest and you will find out that this quiet, ghostly bird is quite a chatterbox. It has a wider vocabulary than most people expect, and a lot of it is not what you would call owl music. Researchers who have listened closely to Barn Owls have counted well over a dozen separate sounds, some made with the voice and some with the bill and tongue. Here are the ones you are most likely to hear.

The screech

The famous call is the screech. It is a long, drawn out, shivery scream, a bit like a hiss and a wail rolled into one, and it lasts about two seconds. The best ones are given in flight, and if you listen carefully you can hear the wingbeats affecting the sound, rather like a person trying to shout while running. The male's screech is usually cleaner and more perfect than the female's, which often breaks up into a rougher, less shivery scream.

The screech is the closest thing a Barn Owl has to a song. It announces that a bird is around, it invites an unpaired female to come and meet a male and it keeps a pair in touch when they are apart. Males often give a run of quieter screeches at dusk before they leave their roost, and their partners will sometimes join in. Unpaired owls of both sexes sometimes fly around for many minutes on end, screeching again and again, in the hope that a mate will answer.

Soft calls between a pair

Barn Owls are affectionate in their own way, and their gentle sounds show it. Between a pair, you might hear purring, which is a run of mellow, tremulous notes used as a kind of come over here call. You might hear a mixture of chirrups, twitters and squeaks, which are friendly greetings. A male often gives a twittering call as he brings food to the nest, and when one bird is being preened by the other, it may twitter softly too. During courtship there is also a plain hiss that seems to mean nothing much more than hello, I am pleased to see you.

Snoring

The snore is the sound that surprises people most. It is a rough, wheezy hiss, given over and over again, and it is most typical of females and young owls. It is not really a request for food, although hunger makes it louder. It is more of a constant, non aggressive way of saying I am here. A female snores to strengthen the bond with her mate and to let him find her when he arrives with prey. Owlets snore to remind their parents they exist, and a hungry brood can make quite a racket. If you have ever heard a barn at night that seems to be full of sleepy, heavy breathing, you were probably listening to a family of Barn Owls.

Very young owlets make a thin twittering, which sounds strangely like shivering, and this changes to the snoring sound within the first few weeks. By eight weeks old, a hungry owlet can be heard many metres away on a still night, and you can really tell when an owl family is nearby.

Warnings and defence

When a Barn Owl is frightened or angry, its voice changes completely. A loud, high, drawn out scream is an alarm, often given by a bird in flight. It is much more likely to be heard in daylight, and parents with young are quick to use it. A harsher, explosive yell is a mobbing call, thrown at ground predators like foxes, and newly fledged owlets are particularly fond of screaming it at people. A cornered owl produces a long, ferocious hiss that gets louder and more scream like the closer you come.

Along with the voice come some remarkable displays. In one, the owl sways from side to side, shifting its weight from one foot to the other, with its wings lowered, its tail spread and its feathers fluffed out. It lowers its head and swings it about while glaring at the danger, puffing and clicking its tongue. Every few seconds it looks down and shakes its head quickly, as though trying to shake off a fly. It looks very odd, and it seems to work, because the bird looks big, strange and rather alarming.

In another version there is no dancing. The owl just crouches as far from the danger as it can, hissing fiercely with its bill nearly closed. Different birds seem to prefer different displays, and many use a bit of both. If it is attacked, an owl will fall back on its talons, lean backwards and strike upwards very fast, and it can grip hard enough to hurt. If a Barn Owl is picked up, it sometimes goes limp and closes its eyes, as though it were asleep or dead.

How a Barn Owl rests

A resting Barn Owl is a picture of peace. It stands on one leg, with the other tucked up in its belly feathers, its body sloping back at an easy angle and its eyes closed. Any small noise makes the eyes open and turn to look. If something worries it more, it puts its other leg down, stands up straight and pulls its wings in close, almost wrapping them around its body so the white underneath is partly hidden. It narrows its eyes to slits so they do not catch the light, and sits very still.

This works better than you would think. People have walked through a barn, looked along the beams and seen nothing, only to have an owl fly off a beam where it had been in full view all along. Most owls do this, including our Tawny Owl, and the trick is a good reminder that a bird does not have to be brown to hide itself well.

Another peculiarity is the way the face changes. When a Barn Owl is dozing, the ruff around the face relaxes and the disc looks like a soft, broad heart. When the bird is alert, the disc is rounder and tighter, and the ridge down the middle looks sharp. So next time you see a Barn Owl in a nest box on a camera, look at the shape of its face to guess how awake it is.