What do barn owls sound like

Males are generally lighter and a more pure white underneath. Females are slightly heavier than males at around g males usually weigh around g although during the early breeding season females may weigh as much as g before egg laying.

Barn Owl normal and starvation weights. They have some extraordinary specially adapted characteristics to help them hunt for food at night, such as incredibly sensitive hearing and the ability to see movement with very little light.

There are loads more interesting facts and information about Barn Owls to discover! Signs of occupation. What do Barn Owls look like? Great Horned Owl Latin: Bubo virginianus. Eastern Screech-Owl Latin: Megascops asio. Get Audubon in Your Inbox Let us send you the latest in bird and conservation news. Email address. Find Audubon Near You Visit your local Audubon center, join a chapter, or help save birds with your state program.

Explore the Network. Become an Audubon Member Membership benefits include one year of Audubon magazine and the latest on birds and their habitats. Join Today. Spread the word. It has a hoarse timbre caused by modulations in the frequency of the sound at a rate of about per second. Individual screeches rise smoothly in pitch but end fairly abruptly.

Gaps between them may be of just a few seconds, making long series with hardly a break. At other times the male stays perched. After the third screech, the male takes off and screeches in flight for another minute.

Courtship screeches while perched near the nest, and then in flight. After mating, they use the same sound to defend the female from rivals. Neighbours sometimes courtship screech in long-distance duels. It is late March and a thunderstorm has just taken two hours to pass. Finally, the scattered trees and lush meadow grass stop rustling and the air loses its turbulence.

Bit by bit as the acoustic opens up, various creatures reoccupy their niches. Crickets take possession of higher frequencies. At centre stage, two Common Barn Owls exchange perennial screeches, one near and one far, for reasons known only to themselves. Perennial screeches of two different individuals. Perennial screeching is the Common Barn Owl sound we hear most often throughout the year.

Rising slowly in pitch, the screech grows in volume for one to two seconds and typically ends abruptly with a pronounced upward inflection. The timbre is a concentrated hissing, like an espresso machine with the steam on. Individual barn owls often seem to have a fairly distinctive signature based on the amount of hiss versus whistle, how strongly their screech rises in pitch, and how abruptly it ends.

Barn owls give perennial screeches one at a time at long but fairly regular intervals. They may fly quite far during the gaps, so when a loud screech at close range catches our attention, the next one may seem surprisingly faint and distant. Less often, either sex may also produce perennial screeches when perched at the nest. In CD , a male of the subspecies erlangeri is flying along a flat-bottomed valley in the Jabal Samhan range in southern Oman, giving a perennial screech about once every seconds.

This well-vegetated wadi is a popular picnic spot during the day. In April, the grass is dry but three months later it will catch the north end of the Indian Ocean monsoon.

The neighbours, however, could hardly be more different. An Arabian Wolf Canis lupus arabs begins to howl. The scratchy sounds at close range are footsteps of a scrawny cow on gravel, curious about me and apparently oblivious to the wolves. Perennial screeches in flight. The barn owls of Arabia belong to subspecies erlangeri. Perennial screeching is virtually the only barn owl sound that I hear during the autumn.

At my home near Sintra in Portugal, I like to record nocturnal migration of passerines on suitable nights, leaving my microphones out for the quieter hours from midnight to dawn. Barely a session goes by without me recording a couple of perennial screeches. All I can say is that it is some kind of long-distance advertisement, perhaps with an aggressive or at least assertive tone. For a long time I believed this was a territorial call Sorace , Siverio et al , but barn owls are not territorial in the usual sense.

Occasionally, it can be more difficult to distinguish between perennial and courtship screeching, especially in males.

Perhaps during the breeding season, male perennial screeches become more like courtship screeches. CD is an example of such ambiguity, recorded in the Netherlands. A slightly gargling screech on my right sounds long and modulated, but more concentrated than a typical courtship screech. The owl is in no hurry and passes invisibly in front of me; 38 seconds later it screeches a little further away on my left.

The third screech is surprisingly distant. Ambiguous screeches of a male. The breeding population in the Netherlands belongs to subspecies guttata. The ghost of long extinct barn owls lingers on in these ancient screeches. Several contemporary species seem to share very similar calls, so their shared ancestors probably sounded little different. Your browser does not support the audio element. Barn owl Tyto alba. Look out for White undersides and face Pale brown and grey wings and back Call Shrill screech, earning them the nickname 'screech owl'.

Best time to hear At the beginning of the spring breeding season when males screech to attract females to nest. Little owl Athene noctua. Look out for Eye mask-shaped face Pale yellow eyes Call Short, repetitive 'woop' or sharper 'kiew kiew'. Best time to hear During the breeding season from April when males advertise territories. Long-eared owl Asio otus.

Look out for Distinctive 'ear tufts' Orange eyes Call Male song: repeated 'hoo hoo hoo' Female call: higher-pitched 'hoo' Male and female call: cat-like 'ree-yow' Best time to hear Rarely heard, and only ever during the breeding season in early spring.