The shriek came at nightfall, breathy, high-pitched and startling. Elisabeth Williams heard it for the first time a month ago, and it was so creepy that it made her stop and listen.
From the patio of her apartment on the Upper West Side, Ms. Williams likes to watch the swallows, blue jays and pigeons sailing by.
Whatever made this noise, though, was no common pigeon.
Weeks passed. Ms. Williams and her husband, Sam, kept hearing the same odd screech. Mr. Williams was on the patio the evening of Oct. 3 when he saw the dark blur of an animal flying by. His wife tried to take a picture of the creature, but it seemed too dark to see anything.
Moments later, she checked the photo on her phone. To her surprise, she saw the image of a barn owl, a species seldom spotted in Manhattan. Its heart-shaped face was turned to look over its brown wings, exposing its belly, which was covered in feathers the color of butterscotch.
She named the bird Scotty.
Then came another surprise: Scotty was not alone. A block away, atop a building on West 75th Street near Central Park West, the Williamses could faintly see an entire family of barn owls perched on the roof of a water tower. They sent pictures of the birds to West Side Rag, a newspaper that covers the neighborhood. From there, the pictures were picked up by local TV stations and spread across social media.
New York’s newest owl celebrities had arrived.
“They fly really close, almost like they’re divebombing us,” Mr. Williams said. “We definitely want to stay out of their way.”
Manhattan has recently been home to a series of famous birds. First there was the colorful Mandarin Duck, also known as the ”Hot Duck,” which alighted in the fall of 2018 on the Pond in Central Park. In 2021 came Barry the Central Park owl, an uncommonly social bird who hunted chipmunks during the daytime, in full view of her phone-wielding fans. Next was Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl surreptitiously released from the Central Park Zoo in 2023. He spent the next year hunting rats and perching on window air-conditioners, to the delight of New Yorkers and anyone with an Instagram account.
Though the previous bird celebrities were solo entertainers, the latest craze concerns an entire family, who bring with them Kardashian-level dynamics and intrigue.
First, like all celebrities, the barn owls of the Upper West Side are a rare sight. Barn owls make permanent homes in Jamaica Bay and on Staten Island. They’ve been spotted occasionally in Central Park, hunting at night. New York lies near the northern edge of the barn owl’s traditional range, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
In nature, the animals like to nest in hollowed-out trees, and in inhabited areas, they prefer abandoned barns and grain silos. A metropolis like New York presents few opportunities for quiet, out-of-the-way nesting. Barn owl populations have declined “at an alarming rate” over the last 20 years, the state has found, as marsh and grassland habitats have been lost to development.
Given all the environmental pressures elsewhere, the arrival of barn owls in Manhattan is great news, said Jessica Wilson, the executive director of NYC Bird Alliance. It’s the first time in modern history that barn owls are known to have nested in Manhattan.
“It’s pretty amazing,” said Robert DeCandido, a prominent bird-watcher known as “Birding Bob.”
As with the Kardashians, outsiders are keen to understand the internal workings of New York’s newly famous family. Did Ms. Williams’s first photo capture the mother of the brood, or the father? How many children do they have? David Barrett, the birder behind Manhattan Bird Alert, has photographed five adolescent owls standing on the roof of the water tower. Other birders say they’ve seen six.
The confusion comes because the birds are small, and people are looking at them from far away. On recent evenings, growing crowds of birders have gathered at two locations along Central Park West where the water tower is visible. Those without the right equipment are likely to be disappointed.
“You will need very strong binoculars if you want to see anything more than a tiny dark blob,” Mr. Barrett said.
Even with these limitations, some facts about the family are known.
The owls begin their evenings at about 7:45 p.m. with a series of screeches, Ms. Williams said. The adolescents hop along the water tower’s roof and take short test flights. Then the adults depart. Sometimes, they perch on sections of the Kenilworth Building on Central Park West, scanning alleys and the park for mice and rats. When they return with food, the children hop with excitement. By 10 p.m., the horrifying screeches begin to quiet.
“You can make it all out by silhouette,” said Mr. Williams, who watches the family’s routine without the aid of high-powered cameras.
Online, excitement about the owls is building. Mr. Barrett has nearly 100,000 followers on X, including hundreds he acquired this week after he started posting pictures of the barn owls.
Thomas Obersteiner lives next door to the water tower, which stands atop 15 West 75th Street, a nine-story apartment building. He is planning to aim cameras at the owls for a livestream, which he said would go live on YouTube on Sunday afternoon.
“It’s totally hot,” Mr. Barrett said of the social media excitement.
Lydia Sugarman is among the owls’ new fans. Tired of all the recent news about wars and disasters, she can’t wait for New York’s famous owl family to get a social media account of its own.
“You wake up in the morning and wonder what kind of new hell are we going to have today,” she said. “And now we have this wonderful distraction.”
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