Barn Owl vs Great Tit
Tyto alba compared with Parus major
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Attribute | Barn Owl | Great Tit |
|---|---|---|
| Scientific Name | Tyto alba | Parus major |
| Order | Strigiformes | Passeriformes |
| Family | Tytonidae | Paridae |
| Conservation Status | Least Concern | Least Concern |
| Length | 35.0 cm (13.8 in) | 14.0 cm (5.5 in) |
| Wingspan | 90.0 cm (35.4 in) | 24.0 cm (9.4 in) |
| Weight | 350.0 g (12.35 oz) | 18.0 g (0.63 oz) |
| Diet | Almost exclusively small mammals, especially voles and mice. Hunts using extraordinary hearing to locate prey … | Insects and spiders in summer, seeds and nuts in winter. A frequent and dominant visitor … |
| Clutch Size | 2-16 | 3-18 |
| Population Trend | — | — |
Size Comparison
Habitat Comparison
Barn Owl
Open farmland, grasslands, and marshes. Nests in barns, church steeples, tree cavities, and purpose-built nest boxes.
Great Tit
Deciduous and mixed woodland, parks, gardens, and hedgerows. Readily uses nest boxes. Highly adaptable to human environments.
Song & Call Comparison
Barn Owl
An eerie, drawn-out rasping shriek 'shreeeeee' — not a hoot. Also gives hissing, snoring, and bill-snapping when disturbed. Chicks call with a persistent rasping hunger call.
Great Tit
A repetitive, teacher-teacher 'tee-cher, tee-cher, tee-cher'. Also gives ringing 'pink-pink' alarm. Highly versatile singer; over 40 song variants recorded from a single male.
Geographic Range & Migration
Barn Owl
The most widespread owl and one of the most widespread land birds, found on every continent except Antarctica.
Great Tit
Widespread across Europe and Asia from Britain to Japan, and south to North Africa and Southeast Asia.
Conservation Status
Barn Owl
Great Tit
How to Tell Them Apart
Barn Owl
Pale golden-buff upperparts with delicate grey mottling. Pure white heart-shaped face and white to pale buff underparts. Ghostly white appearance in flight.
Pale pinkish hooked bill nearly concealed by the facial disc
Great Tit
Blue-black head with white cheeks. Olive-green back, yellow underparts with a broad black central stripe. White wing bar and blue-grey tail.
Short, stout, dark bill
About These Birds
Barn Owl
The barn owl has the most asymmetrical ears of any owl, giving it the finest auditory localization ability in the animal kingdom. It can catch prey in complete darkness using sound alone. The barn owl's distinctive heart-shaped face acts as a parabolic dish, funneling sound to its offset ears.
Great Tit
The great tit is the largest European tit and one of the most studied wild birds in the world. Research at Wytham Woods in Oxford has monitored great tit populations since the 1940s, contributing enormously to ecology and evolution. These innovative birds famously learned to open milk bottle tops in 20th-century Britain.