See It: 2nd Barred Owl Steals The Show In NYC Park

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Introducing the Riverside Barred Owl. The bird was spotted Thursday around 3:30 p.m. at Riverside Drive and West 115th Street.

It's the second celebrity owl to give New York's birders a treat in the past week. In the past few days, a different Barred Owl roosting in Central Park became an instant celebrity. So the news that a second owl was spotted only avenues away sent people running.

Maryte Mercado was the first to put out the call on Twitter Thursday of a new Barred Owl, followed by photos that she told Patch she took on Riverside Drive.

The UWS Barred Owl cc: @BirdCentralPark pic.twitter.com/qF6xxWqBUJ
— Recipe for a Flick (@flickrecipes) November 19, 2020

With yellow and red leaves tumbling to the ground, a sense of excitement replaced the chill in the air as people began gathering under a tree just above Riverside Park.

The onlooking group started out as five and grew to 20 in a matter of minutes.

"What are we looking at?" a man asked as he walked by the group.

"There's an owl right there."

"Is it a Barred Owl?"

He stopped in his tracks and looked up.

Steven Bellovin, a Columbia professor in the Computer Science Department, made sure to clarify that this couldn't be the same owl living in Central Park.

"I was just there 20 minutes ago," he told Patch as he snapped pictures.

"Growing up in New York City, you just don't expect to see animals like this," Bellovin said.

A woman looking on said she had gotten an alert from the Manhattan Bird Alert Twitter page. Her husband had seen the Barred Owl in Central Park and she wanted to make sure he wasn't having all the fun.

At one point, a group of kids moseyed by, only to stop in their tracks. Taking a few seconds to figure out what everybody was looking at, shrieks of excitement followed as they found the owl.

The Riverside Park Barred Owl didn't move a muscle.

Barred Owls aren't rare – they live year round in dense forests in the Northeast. They're unusual in parks in the middle of New York City though.

A third owl – a tiny Saw-whet Owl – was found this week in the branches of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and it's thought to have hitched a ride to the city after the tree was cut down in Upstate New York. That bird is now at a rehabilitation center and is expected to be released.