How long do barn owls live?

From banding data, wild BNOWs live up to 12-15 years. If you are interested in longevity of other birds check out the Banding Lab’s Longevity Records. But more important, please understand that survival rates of BNOWs offspring (and this applies to all birds in general season to season) is extremely low – perhaps 5-10% at best make it to adulthood and breeding. Here’s why: Unlike humans who produce a few offspring (let’s say 1-6) over the course of their entire life time, birds produce these numbers of offspring numbers EVERY YEAR, many starting at their first year of adulthood which can be 1 year old. In the case of a BNOW pair, who for the sake of example might live ten years, they have the potential to produce 5-10 offspring EVERY YEAR over NINE years. Let’s say they average six/year. This means by the time they die they will have produced 9 X 6 = 42 young to replace the two of them. There is simply not enough room on the planet to accommodate all, especially given that there are millions and millions of birds doing the same thing every single year.