Earlier this week, New Yorkers were alerted to the presence of silvery, ghostlike figures among us, gliding through the sky, perching on windowsills, congregating on water towers, and emitting a non-insignificant amount of screeches.
But fear not! On Sunday, Upper West Side-based local news blog West Side Rag published a photo of an American barn owl, spotted by an eagle-eyed UWS resident who said she'd identified its calls through a bird ID app. By Wednesday, the same woman, Elisabeth Williams, had captured photos of multiple barn owls hanging out together. "We watched two flyovers, snapped some photos, and listened to the calls," Williams told West Side Rag. "Back inside, we compared our pictures and their timestamps and were shocked to see there may have been up to four or five owls in total!"
Not everyone on the Hell Gate team is as excited about the owl sightings for folkloric reasons—in Mesoamerican mythology, for instance, owls are denizens of the underworld and generally a bad vibe. But enough of us were charmed by Uptown's newest residents, so we got in touch with a couple of experts to find out what's up with these owls: Are they OK? Why are they here? And what should someone do if they happen to see them?
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