Owls have long been admired for their unique disposition yet they are least known for their lifespan and behavior. Depending on the environment each owl species has its own lifespan. Owls do not have a very long lifespan partly because many of them could not attain maturity age and partly due to the habitat loss.
How Long Do Owls Live
According to the BirdLife International’s Threatened Birds of the World, 27 owls are at the verge of extinction. 20 owl species are considered Near Threatened. All this happened because of excessive human disturbance and also that in few islands some exotic predators have been introduced.
Barn owls are known to have a high growth rate as they produce greater number of offspring as compared to other owl species. However, a very few of them are able to attain the maturity age because they are died of predation. In captivity, barn owls can live as much long as 20 years or so. In the wild they are not expected to survive that much longer.
The maximum age for an American barn owl is eleven and a half years whereas the Dutch owl had lived up to seventeen years and ten months. In England the maximum age that a barn owl had reached was 25 years.
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The average lifespan of a barn owl is about 4 years but only two-thirds of the adults could reach from one year to the next. Only one young out of two or three birds are able to reach the first breeding age.
Many barn owls are starved to death in temperate regions in autumn and winter period. A few of them are even run over by vehicles especially when owls forage on mown verges. Sometimes pesticides also seem to have killed barn owls.
Read More: Ultimate Guide to the Owl’s Diet
Burrowing owls are going redundant in much of its major habitat precisely due to the habitat loss and because of the introduction of prairie dogs.
The spotted eagle-owl is known to live up to 10 years in the wild but in captivity they have a lifespan of about 20 years.
The young snowy owls are not able to reach the adulthood because they are killed by arctic foxes, gray wolves, corvids, and dogs.
The annual survival rate for tawny owl adults is 76.8% with the average lifespan is 5 years. Tawny owl is able to live as much longer as 18 years in the wild and in captivity the maximum lifespan is 27 years. Tawny owl is a small owl species and as such it has many predators including golden eagles, common buzzards, northern goshawks, and eagle owls.
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