Barn owl family nests in Upper West Side water tower, believed to be a first for Manhattan

A family of barn owls has nested in a water tower atop a building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, drawing crowds of birders to the street each night, the Associated Press, in a story published by NPR, and the local news site West Side Rag reported.

It is the first documented case of barn owls nesting in Manhattan in modern history, according to one expert quoted by the AP.

"To the best of our knowledge, like the collective birding knowledge, there hasn't been a nest in, you know, in Manhattan, at least in recorded history," said Andrew Farnsworth, a migration ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the AP reported.

How they were found

The water tower sits on West 75th Street near Central Park West. An Upper West Side resident told a local news outlet on Oct. 6 that she and her husband had seen several owls there, the AP reported. West Side Rag had first reported a barn owl sighting on the block on Oct. 4. The couple had heard screeching outside since early September.

Another neighbor, Thomas Obersteiner, told the AP the nightly wailing in mid-September sounded like someone was "being murdered outside".

How many owls

David Barrett, who runs the Manhattan Bird Alert social media account, told the AP he has seen at least one adult and five fledglings at the water tower, and an adult carrying rodents back to it. Two adults are believed to be present, and some photographers say they have seen six young, Barrett said. West Side Rag reported that as many as five owls, two parents and three young, had been photographed by Oct. 9.

"Having a family, for the first time ever, breeding in Manhattan in recorded history, that's special news," Barrett said.

A rare sight

Barn owl sightings in New York City parks are very rare, according to the city's Parks Department, and New York is at the northern edge of the species' range, the AP reported. The state Department of Environmental Conservation says the barn owl population has declined "at an alarming rate," according to the AP.

The owls are nocturnal, and viewers generally need a long camera lens to see them; binoculars are not enough, West Side Rag reported. Longtime birder Bruce Yolton, who set up a live camera feed, urged visitors to follow owl-viewing ethics after at least one person shone a flashlight at the birds.

One onlooker, Val Coleman, a retired New York City resident, told the AP, "We hope they don't eat poisoned rats with rodenticide in 'em". New Yorkers have embraced celebrity birds before, including Flaco, the escaped Eurasian eagle-owl who died in 2024, and Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk that nested above Fifth Avenue for three decades.