• Barn Owls are silent in flight - this is due to the serrated edge of their feathers which lets the air go between their wings with no resistance meaning no noise. 

• If you want to know the gender of a Barn Owl, look on their chest, if there is spots, it's a Female, if not Male. 

Breeze was a female, which you can tell because she had lots of spots!

• Everyone thinks that all owls twit twoo, however this is a common misconception. Only the Tawny Owls make the twit twoo sound, this is normally a mating call. Our old Tawny Owl, Woody, would do this every night in the box, luring in all the other Tawny's around our village! We loved it, the neighbours didn't!! The Barn Owl creates a hissing sound, which they do when young, or when hungry. The European Eagle Owl and African Spotted Eagle Owl, make a different pitches of the same 'hoo' sound. It is lovely to hear.

• Owls normally mate for life. During this time they can have clutches of between 4 and 6. 

• Chicks don't get their mature feathers until around 6 weeks. From then, they begin to lose their baby down, and their new bright feathers shine through.

Baby Bear

Baby Scooby

• As Barn Owls get older, they grow whiter, and start to lose the marking on their backs and wings. 

• Owls don't have a crop, their food goes straight to their stomach. This is a bad design flaw for them, because if they eat a mouse that has been poisoned, they cannot cough it up leading them to death. Crops are found in hawks, falcons, eagles, and is a place they store their food before digesting it. 

• Owls have much better hearing than other Birds of Prey. Their eyesight is not as good, but their hearing is impeccable. Their ears are behind their eyes, and on Barn Owls are at different levels so that they can fine tune where their prey is to get a more accurate map, because they normally hunt in the dark. 

• I'm pretty sure everyone knows this but their eyes are fixed in their sockets. Unlike us, they cannot move their eyes around freely and have peripheral vision. Due to this, they can move their heads around 270 degress, meaning that they can look at you whilst their body faces away from you. They can also lean their heads right back so that their eyes are parallel with their back. 

• When comfortable, they will often find their balance and sit one footed. They will do this until they feel like their foot is hot enough, and then switch feet.    

• A fleet of Owls is called a Parliament.

• Many people confuse an owls tufts with ears. They are not ears, as I said above, the ears are behind their eyes, the tufts are to simply show emotions. Tango, our African Spotted Eagle Owl, only shows her tufts when she is talking or when we are out, when she is home, her tufts are completely down.