ANATOMY OF BIRDS
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS
CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS
LIZARD-TAILED BIRD
AMERICAN TOOTHED-BIRDS
THE OSTRICHES
THE RHEAS
EMEUS AND CASSOWARIES
THE TINAMOUS
THE KIWIS
THE PENGUINS
LOONS AND GREBES
ALBATROSSES & PETRELS
STORK-LIKE BIRDS
GOOSE-LIKE BIRDS
FALCON-LIKE BIRDS
FOWL-LIKE BIRDS
CRANE-LIKE BIRDS
PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS
CUCKOO-LIKE BIRDS
THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS
SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS
Birds and Birding's Guide to:
Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS
THE ROLLERS AND THEIR ALLIES
THE OWLS
Barn Owl Distribution
Although the Bam Owl is one of the most distinctly nocturnal of any of its tribe, it can see perfectly well in the brightest daylight if it is, for any reason, required to leave its retreat. It usually sleeps during the day, sitting upright in some dark corner, but as twilight comes on it emerges from its seclusion and hurries on silent wings to the hunting grounds, which are usually low meadows, prairies, or marsh lands, where its favorite prey abounds.
In the eastern part of the United States its food consists principally of mice and rats, while in the South it subsists largely on the cotton rat and in the Pacific States on the gopher and California ground squirrel, all, but especially the latter, being very destructive to many growing crops.
The numbers of these noxious animals that are destroyed by a single pair of birds is truly astonishing. Lord Lilford, speaking of the European species, states that he has seen a pair of Barn Owls bring food to their nest no less than seventeen times within half an hour, and Streator, writing of the Barn Owls in California, states that he has found”a deposit of pellets of nothing but gopher hair and bones which had been ejected by the Owls, and had accumulated to the extent of two or three cubic feet in the trees in which they lived.”
The great number of skulls found in these ejected pellets has already been indicated (p. 513), and it seems hardly necessary to urge the protection of these birds on the score of their usefulness.
In the southern parts of the United States this Owl is a resident species, but in the other portions of its range it is migratory, often somewhat gregarious during the winter. It does not appear able to withstand any severe cold and hence it is a rather late breeder, nesting from January or February in the extreme southern districts to April or May in the north. Not infrequently two broods are reared in a season.
previous bird species next bird species
Footer
Footer