Tyto alba

Caspar has been with us at Exmoor Falconry since 2003. Like all owls he has been hand reared, so he is content to be around the public. For the first few years he was flying in the outside display, but this winter (2008/2009) we have retrained him to fly in our indoor Owl Show in the medieval barn. He is an absolute star. Always on the go, post to post, quartering the ground, and circling to pounce on the pounce boxes, he has to be one of our most active, and fun birds here.

Barn owls are well documented and one of the best know species, found throughout the world except the cold Arctic north and Antarctica.

They feed mainly on short tailed voles, especially at breeding time, and may have 4-6 young tucked away in a safe nest in a barn or building. They hunt by quartering the ground, or riding fence posts along a field edge, their long wings designed for open field flight, often with shallow wingbeats rather like a butterfly! Beautiful birds to watch.

They depend largely on their hearing in hunting and may hear a vole within the roots of the grass up to 200m away. When not hunting, a flap of skin, called an operculum, closes to keep out the sound!

We have barn owls visiting our farm, occasionally in the trees around the walled garden, and now and again in the barn itself. They are reasonably common around Exmoor, and have even been recorded nesting over Exford, at an altitude of 1200ft. Our small tussocky fields with plenty of hedgerow and rivers is ideal for them, with plenty of old buildings to nest in, and a good population of voles.