Barn owls are nesting in an Upper West Side water tower, possibly a first for modern Manhattan

A family of barn owls has set up house in a wooden water tower atop a building on West 75th Street near Central Park West, drawing nightly crowds of birders and curious neighbors to the Upper West Side, ABC7 and West Side Rag reported.

"It was, like, totally shocking," Andrew Farnsworth, a migration ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told ABC7. He said that, to birders' collective knowledge, there has been no barn owl nest in Manhattan in recorded history.

How the nest was found

Residents of the block had heard loud screeches at night since September. Elisabeth Williams told ABC7 she and her husband first spotted a single owl on an apartment windowsill, then several owls at the water tower, and contacted a local news outlet. West Side Rag published her photos in early October.

Longtime birder Bruce Yolton wrote on his blog, Urban Hawks, that he found three owls on the tank on Oct. 7 and has since counted two adults and at least five owlets, possibly six. He wrote that he and others had glimpsed barn owls hunting in Central Park for about 18 months without knowing where they roosted. By Columbus Day, he said, the young appeared to have fledged, though some still roost in the tank and the parents keep dropping off food on its roof.

David Barrett, who runs the Manhattan Bird Alert social media account, told ABC7 he has seen at least one adult and five fledglings, and has watched an adult carry rodents back to the tower.

Why it matters

Barn owl sightings in city parks are very rare, according to NYC Parks, ABC7 reported. New York sits at the northern fringe of the species' range, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation says the barn owl population has declined "at an alarming rate." One onlooker told ABC7 she hopes the owls don't eat rats poisoned with rodenticide. New Yorkers have embraced city birds before, from the red-tailed hawk Pale Male to Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who roamed Manhattan after someone let him out of his zoo enclosure and died in 2024.

If you go

The owls are nocturnal and generally come out after dark. Viewing spots on Central Park West and West 75th Street are limited and get crowded at dusk, Yolton wrote, and West Side Rag noted that a long camera lens is needed to see them well. He has urged visitors to follow owl-viewing etiquette, and told the Rag that shining a flashlight at the birds is frowned upon. Because the nest is mid-block on a rooftop, people cannot get close to it.