A beautiful, medium-sized owl with a cream- to white-colored underparts and gray, finely speckled wings. Its hoot sounds like a surprisingly aggressive hiss, which only underscores its predatory nature—it is a great hunter whose main prey consists of voles.

The barn owl (Tyto alba) is a highly synanthropic species, meaning it is closely associated with humans and their activities. It nests on various human structures, primarily farmhouses, and roams open agricultural landscapes, where it hunts the voles, occasionally supplementing its diet with other small vertebrates, including birds, or insects.

Just 100 years ago, the barn owl was a common species, but its population declined significantly during the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, this negative trend has continued, and today this graceful owl is critically endangered.

Two main factors are to blame: the first is an insufficient and unstable food supply. In the modern agricultural landscape, vole populations are subject to severe and widespread fluctuations, which make it very difficult for barn owls to reproduce effectively and survive the winter months.

The second significant factor is the high mortality rate among barn owls. This has various causes, but the most common are predation by other birds of prey and carnivores, collisions with vehicles, and so-called anthropogenic traps—chimneys, various pipes and cavities in buildings, and tanks—where owls crawl in and never come out again.

In 2009, we decided to try to contribute, at least in a small way, to the situation of the barn owl in the Czech countryside.

We had—and still have—several pairs of this species, which we assembled partly from our own breeding programs, partly from those of fellow breeders, and partly from disabled individuals who ended up at our rescue center and, due to persistent limitations resulting from their injuries, could not be released back into the wild.

Conservation Project

In 2009, for the first time—and briefly the last—and then continuously every year since 2014, we have raised several dozen barn owl chicks each spring.

We keep them with their parents for as long as possible and then move them to our spacious flight aviary, where they learn to hunt live prey in a safe environment. Hunting is not an innate, automatic skill, so it is absolutely essential to “train” the young owls in this way before releasing them.

Once the chicks are fully feathered and have mastered hunting, we transfer them to several prearranged release sites that we selected in collaboration with ornithologists from the Czech Ornithological Society.
These are locations where the young owls have ideal conditions to start their lives. They are fed here for a few more weeks, and then it’s up to them to fend for themselves.

Years of the Return of the Barn Owl
project

Bred, trained and released juveniles

Reintroduction sites – Křepenice, Rabyně a Hrachov

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Life in the wilderness is hard, and this is especially true for hunters. According to scientists, they are able to successfully catch prey only about once every 10 attempts. This means they go hungry 9 times—in winter, in summer, in rain, and in wind. Any injury or weakness is then often fatal.

The fact that we released nearly 250 well-equipped young barn owls into the wild does not by any means guarantee that all of these individuals survived. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have good news.

So far, we have received 8 reports, 4 findings of dead birds, 2 follow-up captures, and 2 confirmed nestings. One positive aspect of the findings of dead birds is that all were found far from their release sites. This shows that these birds successfully survived for several seasons.