Plate 171 – Barn Owl

The habitat that John James Audubon describes that the Barn owl requires is almost everything that has disappeared from the North American landscape. “This species is never found in the depth of the forest, but confines itself to the borders of the woods around large savannas or old abandoned fields overgrown with briars and rank grass, where its food, which consists principally of field-mice, moles, rats, and other small quadrupeds, is found in abundance, and where large beetles and bats fly in the morning and evening twilight.” An added hazard for Barn owls and other owls and raptors that hunt for rats are rodentcides. The chemicals that are being used for rodentcides will not reach every rat. But like DDT (see Plate 31), there might not be any birds left, namely Barn owls and other owls and raptors, after they find and consume all of the rats that have been poisoned.