The barn owl as a silent predator around the barnyard is considered a beneficial friend of the farmer by keeping down the rodent population of mice, rats, moles, and voles. It is also the most widely distributed species of owl in North America, quite surprising as most bird watchers say they have never seen one.
They are different to be sure, of a ghostly pale color with no ear tufts, giving them a distinctive heart-shaped monkey-looking face. They often breed and raise a family twice a year, but do not build a nest for that purpose. Instead, they lay four or five eggs in a convenient but secret hidden hollow cavity, like a square of wooden support structure for the elevated ceiling over the loft of a hay barn, as illustrated.
If their secret nesting roost and home for fledglings is discovered, they bob their heads and weave their bodies back and forth, a mysterious conditioned reflex of unfriendly behavior to face down the unwelcome invasion of privacy. This reaction is puzzling enough to be quite effective in leaving a lasting impression on any visitor.
After hatching, the young are almost entirely white with only the mystical features of the face looking back at you with the characteristic wide-eyed expression of complete surprise. Soon they molt into a more mature pale shade of down, and then they will a month later cautiously venture outside, soon to imitate and acquire skills in catching their own food.
All owls swallow their food whole but cannot digest either bone or fur, which they regurgitate in the form of pellets. Now, with the advent of summer, another clutch will soon be on the way, dispersing the first to find occupancy elsewhere, perhaps a nearby cow or horse hay barn where their unwelcome potential predatory presence will crowd the vested occupant comfort zone of swallows and swifts. No wonder they will be glad to vacate for the coming fall migration.
As the motion of the lunar pendulum in the heavens casts its shadow over farmland meadows and pastures, summer nights fall into a silence of nocturnal sleeping … except for the sleepy winking and blinking of the firefly or the pulsating throb of the locust. But as the barnyard rooster energized by rays of the rising sun announces the dawn of a new day, so the arrival of the nocturnal is broadcast for all rodents to listen up to the rasping shrill call of the barn owl that sounds to many like the scream of a human. Then, as silently as he is ghostly, he has left his daytime haunt and is now abroad in the night time sky.
By George B. Emmons