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.<\/p>\n
From the patio of her apartment on the Upper West Side, Ms. Williams likes to watch the swallows, blue jays and pigeons sailing by.<\/p>\n
Whatever made this noise, though, was no common pigeon.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
She named the bird Scotty.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> and spread across social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s newest owl celebrities had arrived.<\/p>\n \u201cThey fly really close, almost like they\u2019re divebombing us,\u201d Mr. Williams said. \u201cWe definitely want to stay out of their way.\u201d<\/p>\n Manhattan has recently been home to a series of famous birds. First there was the colorful Mandarin Duck<\/a>, also known as the \u201cHot Duck<\/a>,\u201d 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<\/a> who hunted chipmunks during the daytime, in full view of her phone-wielding fans. Next was Flaco<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n Though the previous bird celebrities were solo entertainers, the latest craze concerns an entire family, who bring with them Kardashian-level dynamics and intrigue.<\/p>\n 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\u2019ve been spotted occasionally in Central Park, hunting at night. New York lies near the northern edge of the barn owl\u2019s traditional range, according to the state\u2019s Department of Environmental Conservation.<\/p>\n