{"id":364294,"date":"2026-10-04T18:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T18:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364294\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T18:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T18:54:16","slug":"barn-owl-spotted-outside-of-upper-west-side-buildings-extremely-rare-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364294\/","title":{"rendered":"Barn Owl Spotted Outside of Upper West Side Buildings: &#8216;Extremely Rare&#8217; in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                        <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westsiderag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_0194-scaled.jpeg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-106864\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_0194-768x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\"  \/><\/a>An American Barn Owl in the backyard of a building in the West 70s. Photo by Elisabeth A. Beall Williams.<\/p>\n<p>By Gus Saltonstall<\/p>\n<p>A rare <a href=\"https:\/\/guides.nynhp.org\/barn-owl\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">American Barn owl<\/a> has been spotted multiple times over the past month in the backyards of buildings between West 75th and 76th streets, from Columbus to Central Park West, Elisabeth Beall Williams wrote in an email to West Side Rag on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe first heard the owl paying our neighborhood a visit on the night of September 6, and we\u2019ve heard it periodically in the evenings since then,\u201d Williams wrote. \u201cToday, for the first time, we were able to spot it and take a very poor-quality photo. Its screeching is quite loud and we were able to first identify the bird using the Merlin bird ID app.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/owl2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-106867\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/owl2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"656\"  \/><\/a>An American Barn Owl spotted on the Upper West Side. Photo by Elisabeth A. Beall Williams.<\/p>\n<p>Manhattan Bird Alert, the popular bird sighting X account, confirmed to West Side Rag that the photo was of a Barn owl.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt seems unusual for a Barn owl to be in Manhattan \u2013 but I am no expert!\u201d Williams added, who said she took the photo from the back patio of a building on the corner of West 76th Street and Central Park West.<\/p>\n<p>She is correct about it being uncommon.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s how the New York City Parks Department describes a Barn owl sighting in the five boroughs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBarn owls are extremely rare sights in most New York City parks, but there have been sightings over the years in Pelham Bay, the New York Botanical Garden, and Floyd Bennett Field. Their calls sound like a harsh, raspy scream,\u201d reads a section on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nycgovparks.org\/places-to-go-birding\/owls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Parks website<\/a> about owls.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/westsiderag.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=5772ebf2a0a585445f1188785&amp;id=f50755d5f9\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.westsiderag.com\/support-west-side-rag\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An American Barn Owl in the backyard of a building in the West 70s. Photo by Elisabeth A.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-364294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}