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Urban Barn Owl

Aaron Maizlish
 

7:44 pm: Barn Owl flying up the sidewalk and under the eaves of an apartment building at the SW corner of Gough and O’Farrell. Seen as I was driving down Gough.
Is it my imagination or is the population expanding in the city? It doesn’t seem like very many years ago that Barnies were quite rare, and now I see that there’s a bunch of eBird reports this winter in the parks. Anyway it’s cool to see it out so early in the evening, and totally unexpectedly.

Aaron Maizlish
San Francisco
Dominik Mosur
 

Hi Aaron et al.,

Yes the population of barn owls in San Francisco seems to definitely be on the increase ever since we first documented them nesting at the palace of fine arts around 2006-2007. There seems to have been a concerted effort to put up barn owl boxes around the city by the various open space management agencies and this is no doubt at least partly responsible for why they have gotten so much more common. I think there’s also a little bit more understanding about use of rodenticides.

Thanks for the report,

Dom

On Jan 15, 2022, at 19:51, Aaron Maizlish <amm.birdlists@gmail.com> wrote:

7:44 pm: Barn Owl flying up the sidewalk and under the eaves of an apartment building at the SW corner of Gough and O’Farrell. Seen as I was driving down Gough.
Is it my imagination or is the population expanding in the city? It doesn’t seem like very many years ago that Barnies were quite rare, and now I see that there’s a bunch of eBird reports this winter in the parks. Anyway it’s cool to see it out so early in the evening, and totally unexpectedly.

Aaron Maizlish
San Francisco




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