Let It Snow! Wintering For Barn Owls

barn owlsIf you have a barn owl box on your property, you may be asking some questions for the winter such as: do barn owls migrate? If they leave, will they return? If they stay, how do they survive the winter? Is there anything I need to do to help them?

Winter Barn Owl Style

In southern California, the weather is just right for barn owls. It never gets too cold and the summer temperatures are manageable. However, barn owls from other parts of the country such as the northeast may actually come to the southwest during the winter seeking protection from the bitter cold.

This means that you do not have to worry about your barn owls leaving for the winter. However, they may be competing more fiercely for food and habitat with other barn owl visitors during this time. Further, winter is a time when rodents, the natural food of a barn owl, may decide to hide indoors to access food and warmth more easily. This may be one reason the barn owl preferred the enclosed space of a barn to the open fields as it developed.

What Can I Do To Help The Barn Owls In My Area?

While it is tempting to think you could feed or otherwise help the barn owls in your area, you may be doing more harm than good with this approach. Barn owls must survive in their natural habitat, so anything you do to change that could have a detrimental effect on the species.

However, there is one exception to that rule: installing a barn owl box. Before the encroachment of man, there was enough habitat for native barn owls and migrating visitors. Today, man has caused the barn owl to lose a good bit of its habitat, so one of the best things you can do is provide a safe environment from which barn owls can hunt and raise their families.

Barn Owl Boxes is ready to help you enjoy the miracles of nature with a barn owl box right in your own yard.  Every box is constructed of quality materials and guaranteed to last and never need cleaning. Visit our website to see the different models available both with and without cameras as well as bat boxes so that you can attract colonies of bats to your area to help with insect control.