How often have you seen a barn owl, that wonderful ghost-of-the-night? Indeed, have you ever seen a barn owl? Two friends who have spend a great deal of time out of doors fishing, generally touring around the country in the course of their working and leisure life, worked out one day that between them they had seen a barn owl on no more than a dozen occasions; and they were then not so young.
The farthest north was on Mac Art's Fort on the Cave Hill, Belfast, but most of the sightings were in the midlands: in the neighbourhood of Lough Ennell and Owel and Derravaragh; once near Fore and the White Lake; again at the old bridge at Navan. Each remembered the occasion vividly. David Cabot in his Collins Irish Birds writes: "For such an agricultural country not yet suffering intensification as other neighbouring states, it is surprising how rare it is to see a barn owl." He reckons there are 600 to 900 pairs in the country.
Under the old system of bringing in the cereal crop and the general easiness of farm procedures, mice and rats proliferated around many farmyards, and so gave good hunting to the barn owl. In addition to the general tidying up of farming and the use of pesticides above all, the owl population in general and that of the barn owl in particular declined drastically. So much so that in England there has been set up a Barn Owl Trust, which offers, according to an article in the current English Field, advice on the care and conservation of the breed. (At Waterleat, Ashourton, Devon.)
One of the most surprising things in the article is that while there are about 3,500 pairs of wild barn owls over there in Britain, there are some 25,000 in captivity. You can't feed the wild birds with a peanut-holder as you do with smaller birds. These owls are carnivorous. One place where tame birds were released by the Trust is flourishing "This is because the farmer feeds dead poultry chicks to the owls, so that even in really bad weather, when the parent birds can't hunt, they have a guaranteed food supply."
It is a wonderful sight, this silent white bird (white from underneath, on the back it is brown-orange) flapping phantom-like along in the dusk. No doubt at all, the source of many a ghost story. And an odd thing is, that in the right conditions, the barn owl may produce three broods of up to seven young in a year, according to this Field article and quoting a Trust spokesperson.