Diet of sympatric Barn Owls Tyto alba and Short-eared Owls Asio flammeus in an agricultural landscape in south-east Spain Jiménez-Nájar, Pablo Garrido Bautista, Jorge Tarifa, Rubén Rivas, José Manuel Moreno Rueda, Gregorio Pellet Sympatry Farming land Raptors Niche overlap Pest control Acknowledgements We are very grateful to Ángel Tórtola Sánchez and Miguel Tórtola García for their help in identifying bird prey species; without their knowledge the identification would not have been possible. We also thank the IFAPA Centro Camino de Purchil for allowing us to collect pellets at their facilities. Special thanks also to Mariola Sánchez-Cerdá for her excellent company and support during the field work around “hasking place”, as well as to all the volunteers who participated in “Proyecto Sobrevolando”. The comments of two anonymous referees, the editor, and the managing editor improved the manuscript. The diets of the Barn Owl Tyto alba and the Short-eared Owl Asio flammeus have been extensively studied worldwide over the past few years, especially on the Iberian Peninsula. Nevertheless, very few studies have examined the diets and the trophic niche overlap in areas where these two raptor species occur in sympatry. As such, in this study we compared the diets of the Barn Owl and the Short-eared Owl inhabiting agricultural landscapes of the Vega de Granada, south-east Spain, based on pellet analysis. The diets were very similar, as both owls preyed mainly on small mammals, the Algerian Mouse Mus spretus being the prey most commonly found in pellets from both species. Although the diet of the Barn Owl was more diverse than that of the Short-eared Owl, the food niche overlap was very high, thus indicating a low interspecific trophic segregation. Despite the similarities between both diets, the frequency of the Mediterranean Pine Vole Microtus duodecimcostatus was much higher in pellets from the Barn Owl, thus suggesting that the Barn Owl may exert pest control in years when the Mediterranean Pine Vole occurs in high numbers. 2022-11-28T09:04:57Z 2022-11-28T09:04:57Z 2021-12-21 journal article Jiménez-Nájar P, Garrido-Bautista J, Tarifa R, Rivas JM & Moreno-Rueda G. 2021. Diet of sympatric Barn Owls Tyto alba and Short-eared Owls Asio flammeus in an agricultural landscape in south-east Spain. Ornis Svecica 31: 139–150. [https://doi.org/10.34080/os.v31.23108] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/78148 10.34080/os.v31.23108 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional BirdLife Sweden