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American Barn Owl
Tyto furcata(formerly Barn Owl, Tyto alba)American Barn Owl
As flames leaped high in the air, consuming the large Krenzer barn just across the road from John Brown’s house in Scottsville, a pair of Barn Owls could be seen repeatedly flying up to the conflagration. Several times they came “perilously close the flames.” (BA, 20 June 1957) They were trying to rescue their nestlings inside. There was a lump in many a throat as the old landmark was destroyed, Brown reported. “Words, however, do not express the feeling of loss as eloquently as the keening and calling of a pair of Barn owls” that returned to the site again and again on succeeding days “to circle the smouldering ruins from twilight to dawn.” “Half a dozen young owls hatched in a dark recess beneath the barn’s north cupola perished in the blaze, and the parent birds were around for several evenings, circling the ruins and calling,” Brown related. “They were back from time to time that summer, but then they departed for good.” (BA, 8 June 1972) Brown’s feeling of loss is understandable, and not only for the plight of the individual birds involved. Even then this species was rarely reported in our region, making any loss of birds even more troubling.
Background
This is one of the most widely distributed of all birds, a year-round resident across most of the United States south through the rest of the western hemisphere, also occurring in most of Europe and Africa, in India, Australia, and the western Pacific. It is usually found in open habitats, such as grasslands, deserts, marshes and agricultural fields, nesting in hollow trees, cavities in cliffs and riverbanks, nest boxes, and barns and other human structures. Populations have declined in some areas – drastically in the upper Midwest in recent years – but appear healthy in other areas. Two changes in agricultural practices are particularly threatening for this species: 1) fewer open farm structures for nesting and roosting, and 2) a decline in agricultural lands that support high densities of voles and other prey. Nest boxes can help address the first concern. (BNA 1: 1-3, 11) Local history
Bull (1974) grouped this “monkey-faced” owl among a number of “southern” species that had spread northward during the past half century or more. (Bull, p. 326) Even Eaton (1910) was perplexed by this species, listing it as a summer resident, breeding in Livingston and Wayne counties, but entering a ? mark for relative abundance. The Genesee Valley, he noted, was the only area upstate with definite breeding records. However, he considered it only an accidental visitor in Monroe County, where there had been a sighting in September 1899. (Eaton I: county charts; II: 109)R. E. Horsey, in his listing of birds seen at Rochester and Monroe County from 1913 to 1936, indicated this species had been recorded in only four of those years, 1925, 1928, 1930 and 1931, on dates ranging from 11 May to 25 December. He apparently was not aware that four downy young had been “taken from nest at Monroe County Poor Farm” on 12 October 1929. (B&M, p. 277)The 1930 record, at Palmer’s Glen in May, prompted Horsey and Edson to remark that “Evidently this bird will soon have to be taken out of the list of rare birds in Monroe County, as this is the third report of this owl since 1925.” (“Brisk Prairie Horned Lark Has Already Reared Family,” D&C, 27 May 1930)One at Highland Park on 20 December 1931 was the third record in just that year, and a very welcome one, since “this owl is one of our best citizens. . . as its food consists entirely of mice and rats,” Horsey and Edson reported. “It is interesting to note that this owl left three pellets behind and every one contained remains of mice, four mice in all as one pellet had two.” (“Barn Owl Good Citizen, Foe of Rodents, Avers Gardener,” D&C, 29 December 1931)One had been found dead without feet that October, they reported, evidently after being caught in a trap. “Whether set for him or for rats, of course, is not known, but he had twisted his feet off and escaped only to die of starvation as he could catch no food without claws. He was greatly emaciated.” (“Barn Owl Loses Feet in Trap; Perishes for Lack of Claws,” D&C, 5 October 1931)During the 1940s and 1950s, nesting occurred in a covered water tank on the Wiesner farm south of Scottsville “until it finally succumbed to the weather and old age,” Brown noted. (BA, 8 June 1972)In 1954, a huge coal bucket “unused for several weeks,” was lowered from the silos at the Victor Coal and Lumber Company. “In it were five down-covered nestlings which have since received excellent care from George Washburn and Gene Zumbo and others at the yard,” John Brown reported. “For a time they took the young owls out of the bucket each morning and replaced them at night, but now they are in an open topped cage, and the parent birds keep them well supplied with mice and rats each night.” (BA, 12 August 1954)However, when Leo Tanghe analyzed sightings by GOS members from January 1951 through December 1954, this species was reported only 23 times within a 50-mile radius of Rochester. And even that may have been misleading, in part, because birders by then had a reliable place to find them: that barn in Scottsville.Unfortunately, that particular “mouse destroying dynasty” came to an abrupt end on 18 June 1957 when the barn went up in flames. It didn’t help, either, when a Barn Owl reported to have spent most of the winter in a barn in Charlotte was then “shot by irresponsible youths living in the vicinity” in spring 1958. (KB8:47) In fact, it wasn’t until 1960 that not one, but two nesting sites were again located: One in the superstructure of a Barge Canal lock south of the city (WBR, 1 August 1960) and another in the top of a silo northwest of the city. (BA, 25 August 1960) There had been four sightings of these birds that April and May in Island Cottage and the Manitou area. (KB10: 60) Another pair successfully fledged ten young from a nest in a Parma silo in 1967 (KB17: 220; see also 15:231 for nest in Parma with six young of which five died). Doherty and O’Hara made repeated visits to the 1967 site, chronicling the progress of the brood. Six eggs and four nestlings were observed on 6 August; all eggs had hatched by 30 August; four nestlings had fledged by 8 October, and all 10 were gone by 5 November. (Bull, p. 328) “The brood graphically illustrates the fact that female Barn owls start incubating their eggs as soon as they are laid and may continue to lay eggs over a fairly long period of time, not one a day but apparently in irregular groups for nearly a month,” wrote Brown, who visited the site with Jerry Czech in early September. “The oldest owlets in the brood in question must be well over a month old yet there are three little ones that have been hatched only a matter of days.” (BA, 7 September 1967)However, by the 1970s, this species was being reported only sporadically: Birds at Hilton and Honeoye Falls in 1973 were the first in three years, then came another three-year gap before a sighting in 1976 when “a single bird of this apparently declining species” obligingly took “ a comfortable residence on top of an open fodder silo in Lima.” (LG, August 1976) It was two more years before another sighting in 1978. (KB 23:196; 26:215; 28:171)The perennial question: Are they really this rare, or do they simply escape notice?It is hard to know how many reside here. Despite their preference to nest near man, in old barns, silos, church steeples and other structures, they are rarely located because of nocturnal habits and lack of a territorial call. Some are probably overlooked, but it is also likely this species has declined in recent years with the abandonment of farms.
Status
The Monroe County annotated list (1985) described this as an irregular, very rare summer resident and an occasional, rare winter visitant.Livingston County, Fox (1998) considered this an occasional rare summer resident.
Occurrence
Breeding status: Bull (1974) showed eight known nesting locations in Monroe County but none in Livingston or Wayne. (Bull, p. 327) However, during the first BBA project, this owl was reported in only one block, and only as ‘possible,’” along the lakeplain. Instead, most of the 14 blocks with evidence of breeding were in Livingston County. By the second project, evidence of breeding was found in only four blocks, none with confirmed breeding. “It appears that Common Barn-Owl populations in New York may be following a trend similar to that recently documented in Ohio,” Sibley noted. “There, the Common Barn-Owl increased with the spread of agriculture and clearing of forests in the 1800s and then began to decrease after the 1950s as farms were abandoned, commercial fertilizers replaced the need for meadows as part of crop rotations, edge areas were eliminated, and farming shifted from grains to soybean and corn.” (Andrle, p. 200) Winter: By 1993-1994, considered “truly exceptional” in winter. One was at Greece 19 December and 1 January that season. (KB 44:121, 123)
Misc.
“It is doubtful that anyone will ever invent a better mousetrap than a Barn owl,” John Brown insisted. For example, Jerry Czech, assistant curator at the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences collected more than 40 pellets from around a nest in Rush for students to examine in 1967. They contained the skulls and bones of 50 field mice, one short-tailed shrew, one least shrew and a house mouse. One pellet contained the remains of a meadowlark, “which Czech is sure was caught by accident when it made a noise in the grass and was taken by mistake.” (BA, 17 August and 7 September 1967)The “Big Day” team of Mike Davids, Kevin Griffith, and Clay Taylor had an unexpected bonus on 23 May 1982 when one flew within five yards of the car at the circle in Leicester, and was last seen near a church steeple. (Fox, p. 56; BA, 27 May 1982)Banded birds: Two banded nestlings from the Rochester area were recovered the following winter in West Virginia and Tennessee. (Bull, p. 329)
Sidebar: The Scottsville Saga:Barn owls had nested in the Scottsville barn since the 1930s, apparently taking up residence there after a previous nesting site, a large, elevated water tank, was razed. Brown described the barn as a “stately” structure. “Suspension arches supported the gambrel roof, the peak of which was more than 60 feet above the barn floor. Large cupolas rose another 15 feet above the peak. . ." The owls gained access through windows in the peak or, when they were closed, through the pulley holes for the hay fork ropes. “The owls used both the highest ledges at the ends of the barn and the recesses beneath the cupolas.” They were the object of much attention. During a 1948 Genesee Ornithological Society field trip to the Scottsville area, Don Spitz climbed a ladder toward six babies of various ages at the end of a beam. “They made a hissing noise like steam escaping from several radiators. The volume increased and decreased as Don approached or left them.” (GOS, May/July 1948)In the early 1950s Neil Moon and Gerhard Leubner “risked their necks on a narrow ledge” 50 feet up in the barn to “take movies and stills of the eggs and young of the owls nesting there,” Brown noted. (BA, 12 August 1954) “Apparently, however, the owls were allergic to photo floods and flash bulbs. They didn’t nest the following year, though they have since returned.“That same brood was banded with the aluminum bands of the Fish and Wildlife Service. One of them was shot a few months later in Tennessee.”In 1956 “one old bird was killed when a window sash dropped while it had its head stuck through a broken pane, but the remaining adult succeeded in raising four or five young,” Brown noted. (BA, 20 June 1957) After the fire, a steel barn was later erected on the foundations. But the Barn Owls never returned to nest. (BA, 8 June 1972)
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