Understanding the diet of an organism provides crucial information regarding species interactions and trophic niches. However, invasive methods are commonly used to collect diet data, which is not feasible for threatened and endangered species. One such method is the use of DNA metabarcoding on intestinal contents, a method that requires lethal sampling. A new, noninvasive method has recently been tested—DNA metabarcoding of beak and talon swabs—on two specialist avian species. Here, we assess the efficacy of beak and talon swabs on a generalist predator, the barred owl (Strix varia). Barred owls are native to eastern North America but have invaded westward and they are now found in the Pacific Northwest and California where they are destabilizing western forest ecosystems. Our study capitalizes on barred owl lethal removals being conducted in coastal California to test the efficacy of swabbing by comparing the diet results of non-lethal swabbing to lethally collected intestinal contents.  We characterized the diet composition of 78 barred owls collected between 2021 and 2022 and compared diet overlap between swabs and intestines. Our future work includes extracting and metabarcoding DNA from California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) swabs collected during bandings to obtain preliminary diet information.