I won!
January 19, 2025



Hey, guys! I won a Golden Owl Pellet for Eeriest Vocalization by a North American Owl at the North American Owl Awards! Check it out!

Click the audio link to listen to the entire North American Owl Awards ceremony, live from Tufts University!

Let's Split!
December 1, 2024



Help! I've been split in three -- three species, that is! The time-honored designation of Tyto alba will no longer apply to the 3.6 million Barn Owls worldwide. I will now be known as Tyto furcata, the American Barn Owl, while my former namesakes in the Old World, the Western and Eastern Barn Owls, will henceforth be designated as Tyto alba and Tyto javanica respectively. At least that's the latest word from the North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society¹.

The ebird website at Cornell University says that the change was "overdue"², but I for one was perfectly happy with the status quo: Tyto alba uber alles, say I. And somebody please tell me why they called me Tyto furcata, anyway? Do I look like I have a forked tail? Still, we Barn Owls are in good company. We're just one of over a dozen bird species that the society split up this year, taxonomically speaking. The Brown Booby, the Cattle Egret, and the House Wren all shared the same fate.

Of course, most species splits of this kind are based on genetics, but the committee also determined that my display call was unique, something that they had never heard from my former namesakes in the Old World, a sort of "kleak kleak" as they were pleased to call it³. Naturally, I am flattered, but I am sure that the Western and Eastern Barn Owls have their own unique fortes. Anyway, I like to focus on what we Barn Owls have in common: our striking pancake-shaped faces, for instance, and our big black eyes, our penchant for old beat-up barns and our loping flight.

What's in a name, anyway? Surely a Barn Owl of any other species would hoot just as eerily, right? But Tyto furcata?! What were they THINKING!?

Editor's note: My initial research suggests that the designation "furcata" was applied to the Barn Owl by Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck. However, I have yet to find an ornithologically oriented website that describes the Barn Owl tail as forked. In fact, even the Audubon website calls it rounded, short, and square-tipped⁴.




1: A 'wrenaissance' for House Wrens; species and genus splits for Barn Owls and Plovers; and lumping of Redpolls included in 2024 Check-list changes, American Ornithological Society
2: 2024 Taxonomy Update, Cornell Lab eBird
3: A 'wrenaissance' for House Wrens; species and genus splits for Barn Owls and Plovers; and lumping of Redpolls included in 2024 Check-list changes, American Ornithological Society
4: Barn Owl, Audubon