The Twilight Time
Nidderdale Moorland Group
We often refer to Barn Owls as crepuscular. Crepuscular comes from the Latin term crepusculum, meaning ‘twilight’.
It is a term that is used to refer to animals that are active at dawn and dusk and during winter with our shorter hours of daylight and the earlier arrival of twilight seeing some of our more secretive and elusive species becomes easier as they come out earlier in the day as the sun starts to set as here in these pictures taken last week of one of our local Barn Owls.
Barn Owls hunt mainly at dusk and dawn, but will also continue to hunt during the night.
During periods of bad weather, or in spring and summer when extra prey is required to feed chicks in the nest, they can also be seen hunting during the day.
In a normal year a pair of Barn Owls would need to catch around 5000 small prey mammals such as Field Voles, mice, shrews and small rats to survive and successfully rear a brood of chicks.