American Barn Owl

How to find it

Start with day roosts in towns. A guided group saw a Barn Owl roosting by day in Paraíso's town square, and another tour itinerary stops on the way back toward the Central Valley to look for day-roosting owls. For night birding, try open country: in the far north, guides spotlighted one on a dead palm snag during a night drive, and a spotlight found one there on an earlier tour too. Barn and Striped Owls can also show up at night at Zamora Estate in Santa Ana, near San José. Owls roosting under a roof can be hard to see, so look carefully.

How to recognise it

Plain, parallel field marks make this owl easy to place:

A pale owl with a heart-shaped face. The face is whitish with a thin orange-brown rim.

Long, fully feathered legs.

No ear tufts, dark eyes, and a short, hooked bill.

Upperparts a fine mottle of buff, golden and gray.

Underparts whitish to cream with sparse but distinct dark spots.

In Costa Rica it measures about 40 cm and weighs about 425 g.

What it sounds like

Recording: Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

The Barn Owl hunts mostly at night and relies on very sharp hearing to find prey in complete darkness. Its flight is silent, and it eats mainly small mammals, especially rodents.

By day it hides in caves, tree hollows or buildings, and it is usually solitary. In Costa Rica it nests in tree cavities, among rocks, or on ledges inside buildings, such as a church in Palmares, Alajuela. The nest is only a loose pile of twigs and trash, and clutches are 4 to 5 eggs.

Where it lives

This owl prefers open country such as farmland, open marshes, scattered trees, towns and cities, and it avoids thick forest. In Costa Rica it is found nearly everywhere except very high altitudes, in humid areas at both high and low elevations.

Its centers of abundance are the northwest lowlands and the Central Valley. Conservation areas listed for it include Guanacaste, Tempisque, Arenal, Osa, Tortuguero and Amistad. Deforestation has almost certainly raised its numbers in recent years.

Similar birds

Tropical Screech-Owls roost in the same Paraíso square, but this species has no ear tufts and a heart-shaped face. Night drives in the far north can also turn up Striped, Pacific Screech and Black-and-white Owls, so look for the pale face and pale body of the Barn Owl.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Rican names include Lechuza Ratonera, Lechuza de Campanario (church-tower owl), Cara de Gato (cat face) and plain Búho or Lechuza. The national museum's catalogue of birds of the metropolitan area lists it as Lechuza ratonera americana and marks it as a resident.

Status and conservation

Resident (R) on the AOCR list, Least Concern globally and in a Costa Rican wildlife guide, with a stable population and CITES Appendix II listing.

Photography tips

One photographer spent many nights at the base of a church tower with a camera and flash. The owls left at dusk and came back before dawn, and a sharp flight shot took many attempts. Owls under a roof can be hard to see: at a supermarket, a visitor digiscoped the front owl while the second was harder to make out.