Eastern barn owl

Eastern barn owl
T. j. stertens Mangaon, Maharashtra, India
Conservation status
CITES Appendix II (CITES)[1]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Strigiformes
Family:	Tytonidae
Genus:	Tyto
Species:	T. javanica
Binomial name
Tyto javanica (Gmelin, 1788)
Subspecies
Many, see text
Synonyms
Tyto delicatula Gould, 1837

The eastern barn owl (Tyto javanica) is usually considered a subspecies group and together with the American barn owl group, the western barn owl group, and sometimes the Andaman masked owl make up the barn owl. The cosmopolitan barn owl is recognized by most taxonomic authorities. A few (including the International Ornithologists' Union) separate them into distinct species, as is done here. The eastern barn owl is native to southeastern Asia and Australasia.

The eastern barn owl is nocturnal over most of its range, but in some Pacific islands, it also hunts by day. They specialise in hunting animals on the ground, and nearly all of their food consists of small mammals which they locate by sound, their hearing being very acute. They mate for life unless one of the pair is killed, after which a new pair bond may be formed. Breeding takes place at varying times of year according to locality, with a clutch, averaging about four eggs, being laid in a nest in a tree hollow, old building or fissure in a cliff. The female does all the incubation, and she and the young chicks are reliant on the male for food. When large numbers of small prey are readily available, barn owl populations can expand rapidly.

König proposed that Tyto alba delicatula should be split off as a separate species, to be known as the eastern barn owl, which would include the subspecies T. d. sumbaensis, T. d. meeki, T. d. crassirostris and T. d. interposita.^[2]