When Tracy Dorfman, 51, got laid off this spring from the tech job she’d held for almost two decades, she didn’t expect to find solace in owls.
But one day in April, the Bernal Heights resident found herself in a familiar internet spiral: seeking dopamine hits on Facebook. One post stopped her scrolling: Someone had posted photos of a family of great horned owls nesting on Bernal Hill. Dorfman got up from her computer, put on her shoes, and set out to find them.
At the top of the Esmeralda Steps, a woman with binoculars pointed Dorfman toward a pine tree. There, nestled among the branches, she saw two owlets — fluffy, adorable, and oblivious to the world unraveling below them.
Dorfman started visiting the family of four owls every day. When the job search was dispiriting, the owls were there. When the news stories were bleak, the owls were there, their layered white, gold, and brown feathers a sliver of beauty and stillness in the city. “These owls have helped maintain my sanity,” she said.
She’s not alone. The owls of Bernal Hill have caused a stir in the neighborhood, on the internet, and in the city at large. Videos and images of the owls have flooded local Facebook and Nextdoor pages, often generating hundreds of likes and dozens of shares. People from all over the city have been heading to Bernal to spy the owlets.
The owls are a modest but proud entry to the ranks of viral bird sensations — the most recent example being the Big Bear eaglets delighting the internet this year. Birds have been uniting the internet and people IRL since at least 2011, when New York University’s hawk livestream was so popular it got full-bore New York Times coverage. Great horned owl live cams are popular — chief among them a Cornell-hosted stream in Texas.
Great horned owls have been proliferating across San Francisco in recent years. Though not rare — they are one of two species that breed in San Francisco, and couples have been seen nesting in Glen Canyon and Golden Gate Park — this family is special because of the location of the nest.
“They’re around us all the time, we just don’t see them usually,” said Whitney Grover, Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s director of conservation. “That pair just nested on a tree where there’s a lot of visibility.”
Grover said one reason for the uptick in sightings is the rat boom. More rats mean more food. Because, as adorable as these birds are, they are killers.
They also help gardeners, who are contending with the dreaded gopher. Kathy Ryan, a Bernal resident in her 70s who started a garden club in the area, thinks the birds are cute, but their killing prowess is what she respects. “I’m happy because owls eat gophers and voles, and they keep a balance in the garden,” she said.
Even the most devoted owl fans of Bernal are not quite sure when the birds moved in. Ryan has been seeing foot traffic through her garden since the baby birds were first spotted in April. This fits with the breeding season; according to the Owl Research Institute, great horned owls lay their eggs between mid-February and late March, and they incubate for about 30 days. So the parents have been in the neighborhood since at least late winter.
Grover estimates the babies to be 6 weeks old, based on their behavior “hopping around on branches.” In five weeks, they’ll be strong enough flyers to start hunting on their own.
On a recent sunny weekday, a dozen people were gathered at the top of the Esmeralda Steps to spot the charismatic raptors. Bird-watchers came prepared with professional cameras and binoculars. Others, on hikes, stopped along their route, pointing out the birds to children.
A group of master gardeners finished an event at the steps, then gathered around the tree, pointing out the owls to passersby. As people oohed and aahed at the birds, others stopped to see what the commotion was about. Grover recommends not lingering below the nest for too long so as not to disturb the family.
Checking on the family has become a daily ritual for Sarah Fleming, 33, and her 13-month-old daughter, Evelyn — whose third word was “owl.” “I am a stay-at-home mom right now, and so I don’t get to socialize with that many people,” Fleming said. Now, every time she goes out to the park, there’s a crowd waiting to talk owls.
When Bernal residents rally around something, they tend to make headlines. Ryan said she hasn’t seen her neighborhood as connected since the pandemic, when people would leave out baked goods and hide miniature figurines throughout the park.
“It just makes me happy,” she said. “People share their telescopes and photos. It’s kind of lovely.”