BARN OWL - Tyto Alba Alba
The Barn Owl is widely distributed across Great Britain. The barn owl is nocturnal but it also hunts by day. Barn owls specialise in hunting animals on the ground and nearly all of their food consists of small mammals which they locate by sound, their hearing being very acute. They mate for life unless one of the pair gets killed, when a new pair bond may be formed. Breeding takes place at varying times of year according to locality, with a clutch, averaging about four to five eggs, being laid in a nest in a hollow tree, old building or fissure in a cliff.
The female does all the incubation, and she and the young chicks are reliant on the male for food. When large numbers of small prey are readily available, barn owl populations can expand rapidly. This means populations will fluctuate but overall a gradual decline is being seen in the UK.