Hide and Seek

By Keith Michael 

This time of year has me traipsing dozens of miles, through every likely place that public transportation can drop me off, hoping to see just one of those dark blobs against the sky: an owl. When you see any of the glamor photos of owls sitting perfectly framed with their bright eyes open and arrestingly dilated, it’s so easy to imagine, “Well, lucky for that photographer that they happened to be there to see that owl.” Honestly, it almost never goes that way. One waits.

And waits. Winter is often a good time for owl spotting because the leaves are off of the trees and it’s easier to notice those “dark blobs.” These charismatic birds are not exactly migratory though they do go to where the food is. If it is a harder winter further north, more owls may travel to see us in NYC where there is always fine eatin’. With this winter’s mildness, there has been little impetus for owls to wander.

February brings SuperB OWL Sunday, a birders’ knowing joke for celebrating the elusive charms of owls rather than pigskin. However, try this insiders’ witticism on the uninformed and you’ll likely get an owl-like stare above a frozen smile.

There are eight owl species that CAN be seen within NYC (from smallest to tallest)—Saw-whet, Eastern Screech, Short-eared, Long-eared, Barn, Barred, Great Horned, and Snowy—and for the past exciting year a ninth, and the largest, owl graced the city. Far more than a mere check on a species list, that singular sensation Flaco, the Eurasian Eagle Owl who had escaped from the Central Park Zoo, was a beloved, beautiful, inspiring, controversial, one-and-only individual. He had been thriving in the wild for over a year until his abrupt demise on February 23, 2024.

A counterintuitively tricky part of finding owls is that birders are exceedingly wary about sharing tips about where an owl has been seen. This is not only proprietary. There is good reason. People become owl-obsessed and will stalk them. During the day, owls are trying to disappear so that they can sleep before their nocturnal hunting. Just stopping to look at an owl can bring attention to their daytime hiding spot for their detractors—Blue Jays, crows, and hawks—that will harass them mercilessly to “Get outta town!” If a friend can be finagled to pass on the landmarks for an owl roost, it is often shared hesitatingly with, “But don’t tell anyone else.”

I’ve been lucky enough, and walked enough miles (and cultivated enough friends willing to do the secret owl-intel handshake) to see all of the different kinds of owls, multiple individuals, within the city, except for the Short-eared Owl. As a winter excursion, I highly recommend going to Shawangunk Grasslands National Wildlife Refuge near Wallkill, NY at dusk to see the floppily graceful flight of hunting Short-eared Owls.

Contrariwise, the daily locations of famous owls, such as the late Flaco, have often been shared freely. The Spot for a new owl in Central Park is often transmitted through the birder-iverse within minutes and long-lens cameras begin showing up at the site, having rigorously trained their birder-companions to lug them there. A recent pair of Long-eared Owls in Central Park kept bird watchers entertained for three weeks through rain and snow by returning to the same tree and staying, intriguingly, partially hidden. Being difficult to see is part of their allure.

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“Just keep looking for a dark blob in the branches against the sky.”

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I have never found a Saw-whet or Screech Owl on my own without someone telling me in advance approximately where to look. One Saw-whet had its 15 minutes of fame in 2020 as a stowaway in the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. If this elf isn’t right in front of you staring eye-to-eye, a Saw-whet could be mistaken for an overgrown pinecone. The Screech Owl’s camouflage technique is to just sit right out in the open in front of something that looks exactly like them. There are gray owls and red owls. The fancy word for that is “morph.” Remarkably, gray morphs sun themselves in trees with gray bark and red morphs in rust-colored cavities. Good luck finding them.

Lamentably, I’ve still never seen an owl in the West Village. I’ve heard about a sighting every once in a while, but by the time I got there, the owl was gone. Believe me, all winter I look in every tree I pass, hoping “just maybe.” While Flaco’s wanderlust was taking him around the city—from Central Park, he explored the East Village, and toward the end he’d been hooting it up from backyards and water towers on the Upper West Side—I’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, he’d try the West Village next.

Sadly, none of us will see Flaco’s orange saucer eyes staring back now as we look out our windows. However, if you DO see another owl, let me know, please. (I won’t tell anyone.)