Western Barn Owl

The western barn owl is a medium-sized, pale-coloured owl with long wings and a short, squarish tail. The facial disc is characteristically large and heart-shaped, usually bright white but brown in some subspecies. The plumage on the head and back is a mottled grey or brown, and the underparts vary from white to brown and are sometimes speckled. It was formerly treated as a subspecies group together with barn owls from other parts of the world, but that grouping proved paraphyletic (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is nocturnal over most of its range, though in Great Britain it also hunts by day. Breeding is at varying times of year according to locality, with a clutch averaging about four eggs in a hollow tree, old building or cliff fissure; the female does all the incubation and relies on the male to hunt. Nestlings are covered in white down, and the heart-shaped facial disc becomes visible soon after hatching (Wikipedia, general species account).