The barn owl can be found all over the world. In the Americas, it ranges from southern Canada to the tip of South America and hunts in areas rich in rodents, along desert washes and canyons, where trees for perching are available.

This medium-sized owl grows to as much as about 51cm in height and has a wingspan of about 1.1m. It has long, feathered legs and makes a loud, rasping hiss, rather than the hoot associated with other owls.

Barn owls are more active at night than other owls. They wait until dark before starting out to hunt. Normally, before daylight, they retire to some shadowed or enclosed area in an old building, a hollow tree or a hole in a rocky cliff and remain there drowsy and inactive all day.

The eyes of owls look forward in a fixed position and cannot move to the side, as the human eye can. To see to the side or back, the owl must turn its whole head. They see extremely well at night. 

Their hearing is extremely sharp also, for it is known that a barn owl can hear a mouse in the dark.

It hunts its food--almost entirely rodents--in garbage dumps, neglected cemeteries, rundown farms, and waste lots of large cities. When hunting at night, the barn owl sweeps the fields on silent wings, catching its prey with its claws. It prefers small mammals but occasionally in winter when mice and gophers are scarce, it will take small birds.

Barn owls choose nesting sites almost anywhere, in old buildings, hollow trees and on or in the ground. No effort is made to build or line the nest.