♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Susan Hirasuna: The scene in this neighborhood has changed radically.

announcer: A snowy owl perched on a rooftop in Cypress.

Susan Hirasuna: It is a rare sight for Southern California.

This is a snowy owl, native to the Arctic.

Adam Ansari: Last December this bird decided to like show up, and it allowed me to just forget everything.

I own an engineering company putting in new electrical distribution systems, medium voltage and low voltage systems, for venues.

My primary function at this company is to make sure that everybody gets to keep their job, go home, and have a good life.

I had to decide whether or not to go to lawsuit with a company over millions of dollars, and the level of anxiety that I can describe for something like that.

You're never happy.

You wake up, you have about maybe 15 seconds of like bliss, and then the thought enters your mind, like, "Oh, yeah, I'm living this life."

That owl did something different to me.

I was getting an escape.

♪♪♪ Jyoti Vyas: My kids had moved out and gone off to college, so I was like the empty nester, so I was looking for something, and I just fell on politics.

I was making a real difference, and then one day I woke up my husband at night, and I said "Something is wrong.

I don't know what it is."

And I had this severe headache like I've never had in my life.

So he took me to the emergency room, and almost immediately, there were like two people, and then all of a sudden it became like four and six, and then I knew something was wrong, and I kind of started to panic.

I later realized I had a stroke.

People would talk to me and say something, and I would forget what they said.

Everything I had accomplished was just gone.

It's just over, I just thought it was over.

Roy Rausch: My father and I, we were very close ever since I was a child.

We spent a lot of time birding throughout our entire life.

He was a birder since he was a kid and, and I was also a birder since I was a kid.

The feeling of just always looking for unusual birds brought a lot of joy to me, and a lot of our adventures involved birding for sure.

He had a stroke, and I became his primary caregiver, doing a lot of the things you need to do when someone's bedridden.

And so there's, you know, it's not always the easiest thing to do.

I wouldn't have it any other way, all the time I got to spend with my father.

He passed away on Father's Day.

It was a difficult time in a lot of ways in my life.

I was kind of wondering, I was thinking at the new year, "I'm gonna have to do something different, right?

I gotta, I gotta do something different.

I have to."

Jyoti Vyas: We were walking one day, and I saw something on the roof, you know, and I tell my husband, I said, "There's an owl on the roof."

And he goes, "No, no, no, it's one of those ornament things."

And I said, "But it moved."

Adam Ansari: I came to work, and I started sitting for all these meetings, and I have an assistant, his name is Pime.

So I told Pime, I'm like, "Hey, listen, there's reports of this bird.

Go over there and see if you can find this."

Roy Rausch: December 27, I saw a rare bird alert, and I saw that there's a snowy owl on that, and, when I looked carefully, it was within about a five-minute walk of my house here.

And it's lucky I was dressed because I would have gone on my pajamas, I don't think I would have cared.

Adam Ansari: I noticed that my phone on the edge of the table was like kind of buzzing, and it was like moving across the table.

I had like five missed calls from Pime and 13 text messages.

It dawned on me, like, "This bird's actually there."

And I just put my phone down, and I'm like, "Guys, I gotta go."

I had my nice cameras and my tripod all ready, and I just threw everything in the car, and I just drove out.

I think I peeled out of the parking lot.

Jyoti Vyas: I started out with this stroke, and I just wanted to be in my house, and I didn't want anyone to see me, you know, I was so scared.

But it was my need to know and see the owl that was greater than my fear.

I took my walker, and there's some people out there, and I'm walking on my sidewalk, and I'm looking and looking, "Where's the owl, where's the owl?"

And then suddenly I found myself standing in the crowd.

The owl seemed like it was looking at me.

And it was like, this owl took a special moment just to say, "Yeah, I've seen you.

It's not your imagination."

Then it was like more people were coming, and there's like a news truck.

It was just our neighborhood street thing, and then all of a sudden it just boomed.

announcer: A rare and beautiful sight in Orange County.

Araksya Karapetyan: Yes, people are flocking to see this large raptor.

announcer: The majestic creature drew quite a crowd of onlookers.

Araksya Karapetyan: Phones and long lenses aimed at a single bird on a roof.

Susan Hirasuna: So, for whatever reason, that snowy owl likes this Cypress neighborhood.

Reporting live in Cypress, I'm Susan Hirasuna, Fox 11 News.

Adam Ansari: It's a big deal that this owl's in our neighborhood.

When I got there, it was just like, "I can't believe it."

It was magical, and, you know, I set up my camera.

That owl was big; it was a big predator.

She had a massive wingspan, like five feet.

The very first person that I met there was Roy.

"What's going on?

This is the A7R5 with the snowy owl."

Roy Rausch: Yeah, that's showing it.

Adam Ansari: Watch it turn her head, there you go.

At that point I did not think about the stupid lawsuit for another four hours, just forgot everything.

Roy Rausch: It was such a special moment in my life.

I'm pretty much smile a lot anyway, but the smile on my face was just ear to ear.

I was so happy because it was that impressive, being a lifelong birder, seeing a bird you would normally have to go to the Arctic or Canada to see, to have in this neighborhood in Southern California.

All right, nice to meet you, man.

Adam Ansari: Oh, yea, nice meeting you.

Roy Rausch: Signing off.

That day I met my very favorite photographer, and new good friend, Adam Ansari.

I found out Adam has a business here in Cypress, but he's a photographer who travels the world to photograph animals.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Roy Rausch: But all those travels didn't really involve birds.

Adam Ansari: I didn't know anything about snowy owls.

I didn't even know that the Harry Potter owl was a snowy owl.

I think my photography style is like big cats, big predators, big creatures that you don't get to see every day.

That was the great thing about Snowy was that that was as close to like a leopard as I was gonna get in Cypress, right?

She was just a strikingly beautiful bird.

She was very stocky and strong, fierce looking.

When you actually get a look at her talons, it's just they're so big and strong.

Adam Ansari: The margins of her mouth, her beak, you could see, it's almost like there's a smile there, a little gray shadow, and it makes a little smile, and with the yellow gold big eyes.

She had a big personality, lots of facial expressions.

Jyoti Vyas: That's the time I met Roy, and I heard from somebody else who he was, but he noticed me, and I think he had a connection because I think he remembered his dad.

Roy Rausch: This snowy owl, it got her walking, she met her neighbors.

It really helped in her recovery.

Jyoti Vyas: It was out of its element, trying to survive, and here I was, I felt out of place, and I was trying to survive.

Everybody was studying the owl, and how old was it, and where it must have come from?

Frances Marquez: How did she get here?

That's the question.

We were just like, "Whoa."

Barbara Bauer: "Did she come from Siberia?

Did she fly here?"

Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: A lot of people say it came down on a ship.

Roy Rausch: There are definitely people down here that collect unusual and illegal animals.

Josh Lindsay: I think that it came from somebody's backyard.

Barbie Rodermund: I'm also a Harry Potter fan, so she reminded me of Hedwig.

Frank Cruz: She could have been a Harry Potter mascot.

Roy Rausch: Could have been a storm.

It could have just been, you know, somehow thrown off course.

Barbie Rodermund: Why did she pick Cypress?

She could have gone to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

She went to Cypress.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Melissa Borde: I serve as a reserve manager and environmental scientist at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.

Bolsa Chica is one of the most biologically rich ecosystems in the entire coast of California.

I was in Stockton, California, I got a text from a friend that said, "Melissa, have you heard of this?"

And it was a picture of a snowy owl on a roof.

I said, "No way."

She is in fact the first recorded snowy owl in the last 100 years here in Southern California, so it's a really big deal.

Her first sighting was November 12 in San Pedro, which is right next to the port.

I think that's one of the ideas of why people came with this conclusion that she might have come in on a ship.

But I actually reached out to Denver Holt right away, and I said, "What do you think?

Like, what are the possibilities of this?"

Denver Holt is the director and founder of the Owl Research Institute based out of Charlotte, Montana.

He spends year round trapping, banding, long-eared owls, short-eared owls, great gray owls, the snowy owl.

Denver Holt: Normally snowy owls for breeding are found in the circumpolar region or the Arctic tundra, whether it's in Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, basically it's the treeless tundra where they nest.

Melissa called me up, and she sent me a photograph, and I looked at it.

I go, "Oh, it looks like a young female."

Females are more heavily marked, females are larger, and they have a different plumage pattern.

We didn't think it was a captive bird because it looked in too good of shape.

Its feathers were structurally in good shape, and captive birds, they can tend to get all messed up.

It could have just migrated down the coast, could have hitched a ride on a freighter or or some kind of ship out there, and just rode it down.

Could be either one of those options.

Adam Ansari: One thing I know from like nature photography is, when there is a sighting, you don't know when that animal is gonna leave.

I really felt like this bird was gonna fly away; we were never gonna see it again.

So every morning we would drive around, and we would look for this bird.

Roy Rausch: As soon as the sun started coming up, I'd be heading over in the dark sometimes, just looking for silhouettes on the roof.

This is my daily ritual.

Hunting for the snowy owl.

About 6:30 in the morning.

Adam Ansari: Roy and I had kind of a text message.

I think it was kind of one-sided; it was just me like, you know, saying, "Hey, Roy, what's going on?"

Like, "Oh, hey, Adam," like, "Where's the owl?"

Roy Rausch: Hey, Cypress snowy owl, where are you, where are you?

The snowy owl would usually be perched in a spot where you would see it, so-- even when it was fairly dark.

That's a-- oh, just found it, just found it.

Did you see that?

We've got it, it's actually a very good location.

Adam Ansari: But, when we would find her about 6:30 a.m., her pupils were wide, very wide, so it's not a sleepy owl anymore, she's got more personality.

There was a few times I took the kids to school late, and, I'm sorry, I told the office something else, so.

It was because of the owl.

I'm coming up upon Wise Al; he's the owl watcher.

"Good morning, sir?

Hey, how you doing?"

Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: "Hey, she moved again."

Adam Ansari: Al walked every morning in the neighborhood.

I called him Wise Al because he knew everything about the owl, its behaviors especially.

Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: She lands on a high spot, looks around, and finds her roosting place for the day.

She goes go there and lands there.

Now, she probably will change houses during the day; she'll fly from one house to another one, close by, of course.

Then she takes off.

Now lately it's been around 5:30, final takeoff.

Yesterday was the latest, 5:34, so.

♪♪♪ Adam Ansari: Some days she would fly early, some days she would fly at like 5:20, 5:25, and it would be purple out, you know.

♪♪♪ Jyoti Vyas: It drew everybody in.

It was just like this surreal moment.

Adam Ansari: I spoke to the photographers a lot.

We talked about settings.

Frank Cruz: The challenge was that she would fly just as the light got dim enough.

Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: There it goes, there it goes, there it goes, Snowy.

Frank Cruz: Which makes it really difficult to zoom into something, you know, such distance, and get the action of the flight.

Adam Ansari: A lot of my photos are just close ups of what her mannerisms were, what her-- ruffling her feathers and that type of stuff-- in great detail, you know.

Frank Cruz: You can't help it but really fall in love with her.

When she jumped to fly, there's always one that almost meets all the requirements, you know, the action, the symmetry, the extension, the color, the exposure.

It's very special.

♪♪♪ Frank Cruz: All of these little details that separate a good picture from an average picture.

If you missed that 1 or 2 seconds when it takes off, you got nothing.

There's a guy doing pictures for the Washington Post the other day, and I gave him my information to have that first-- Oh, no, oh, no-- Okay, just flew.

Hope she stays in Cypress.

Roy Rausch: What I did to share this experience more with people was start a Facebook group called Cypress Snowy Owl.

Walter Josten: When I first saw Roy's Facebook page, what I really loved about it were the amazing images, photographs, as well as pieces of art that people were putting up and showing how much they were inspired by this beautiful bird.

About 10 years ago I did a portrait of a snowy owl.

I think it captures what most people love about snowy owls, the light shining from behind those eyes, the golden eyes.

It's one of my favorite paintings.

Roy Rausch: It was just a very positive community, where sometimes social media can be pretty negative, and you not only meet people online, but you also, from that group, you end up meeting people in person.

speaker: What's your name?

Roy Rausch: Roy.

speaker: Roy, my brother's named Roy.

speaker: I've been following your Facebook page like glue.

speaker: This is my granddaughter.

Roy Rausch: Hi, I'm Roy.

Lee's a great guy.

In any suburb, and in this area, you don't know half the time who's two doors down.

Jyoti Vyas: I found people who would come up to me, and I didn't know them, and they were, you know, speaking to me, "Hey, would you like this?

Are you cold?"

speaker: How long will it stay?

We don't know.

But it's sure fun to look at.

Walter Josten: Snowy wanted to keep coming back to these rooftops here.

She had some connection to these people.

Barbara Bauer: I fell in love with the owl.

I went home at night, and I started obsessing about the owl, and everyone I know that saw the owl felt the same way.

Frances Marquez: I feel like she could feel our love, and we could feel her love.

speaker: Crazy people, crazy people.

♪♪♪ Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: Probably once in a lifetime thing you're gonna see that owl.

So that's why people are traveling from all over the place to see it.

Roy Rausch: This is Roy Rausch reporting from Cypress interviewing Jim Moret from Inside Edition.

speaker: Oceanside, we got Oceanside here.

Anyone further, oh, there's my--from this morning.

Roy Rausch: I love seeing the community together, and it made me feel good that that was a result of the Facebook group.

We know that it was eating small mammals.

We think it ate a lot on the golf courses that are nearby.

Denver Holt: Up on the Arctic tundra, 90% of their diet is lemmings, these little, you know, hamster-like animals that weigh 2 to 3 ounces or so.

On their non-breeding grounds, when they migrate south and they move out to coastal areas or to prairies or wherever, here in Montana, could be out in the prairies, then they can diversify their diet, and they can eat rabbits, they could eat squirrels, they could eat ducks, sea birds, etcetera, depending where they are.

Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: Wife and I were sitting in the living room watching TV, and we hear all these crows outside just making a horrendous noise.

I had my security cameras, and I put one of them up on the owl, and, sure enough, there had to be at least 100 crows lined up.

[crows cawing] Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: And they were given this thing all kinds of trouble.

Frances Marquez: To see her get dive bombed by crows, I thought, "She's fearless."

And she really inspired me to like not fear anything, you know, she could care less.

One day where I drove at 4 o'clock, after work, I said, "I'm gonna go see the owl," and a woman came out of the house, and it was Jyoti.

Jyoti Vyas: It was so funny because Frances was one of the people that I recommended to run for political office.

So I said, "Frances, Frances," and she waves at me, and I said, "No, come here, come here."

I said, "Look, I wanna show you something."

Frances Marquez: You know, and I hug her and you know, tell her how grateful I am to see her.

Jyoti Vyas: And I said, "It's in my backyard."

Frances Marquez: I looked up at it, I meditated, I prayed, and I was so like grateful to have-- being with Jyoti.

Jyoti Vyas: It reunited us.

It's something I don't think I'll ever forget.

I hope I don't forget.

Josh Newman: There are children, in this community and all the communities around here, who have never been to-- into nature, right?

They've never seen animals in the wild.

So this is a precious reminder that hopefully that inspires a whole bunch of kids to learn more.

Patricia Josten: People put their phones down.

People enjoyed moments of parenting and fun with their children that I honestly don't see very often these days.

Roy Rausch: What brings you to see the snowy owl today?

How excited are you?

speaker: My dad brought me here.

Roy Rausch: I brought my spotting scope, and I put it down at the level of children, and their expression was like, "Wow."

Grace Metzger: That was actually the first time I saw an owl.

I got a close look at her, and, when she looked me in the eye, I got to really see her yellow eye.

Roy Rausch: Yeah, sometimes she'll look right at you with both eyes.

Grace Metzger: And I felt happy, and I wanna look for more and investigate for more birds.

Chance Farkas: When I first read about snowy owls in Harry Potter, I actually didn't know they were real, and it was impressive when it would turn its head, just, you know, turns, like, just looking around, pretty slowly, too.

I think it's really important that people were seeing the owl because they would understand how incredible nature was, and they would push them to preserve the habitats of these creatures.

Josh Newman: We should all remember that we're all part of these very interdependent larger systems, and we shouldn't forget it, and we as people have an obligation to all the other species with whom we coexist.

Melissa Borde: Let's use this as an opportunity to teach about, why are owls are important?

They're an indicator species.

They tell us the health of an ecosystem.

So let's say, for example, an owl is eating rodents.

If you remove that owl from that system, that food web, those rodents are going to multiply by the millions, and those rodents are going to destroy our agriculture; they're going to impact humans; they're going to cause disease.

And they're also going to impact native species.

It's really important that we captivate young scientists and why it's important for them to also contribute to conservation in the future.

Patrick Josten: We are striving to introduce Thomas to birds.

It's important because we wanna make sure that the different species are around and appreciated from our generation to the next.

Lisbeth Lugo-Josten: I think it's also just showing them there's more to things than just what's on TV and your iPad, so.

Lisbeth Lugo-Josten: Exactly.

Gail Richards: The mission of the Sea & Sage Audubon Society is to protect birds and the places that they live.

The old adage is that the birds are the canaries in the coal mine and are giving us information about how our environment is doing.

Studies have been done; we've lost nearly 50% of birds, and it's really quite alarming.

That snowy owl was in a new habitat that it didn't belong in, and we have to ask, why?

And is it going to happen more often?

Are there pressures in terms of climate change and warming in Alaska that are bringing birds further south?

Denver Holt: I'm not a climate, you know, researcher by any means, but a lot of my friends are who work in Alaska, so I get to chat with them quite a bit.

And what they'll tell me is that the Arctic is heating up faster than I think than most other ecosystems in the world.

How that affects lemmings is the concern for the snowy owl, so that is a concern for the future.

But, in the study area that I'm at, the snowy owl populations are declining.

The magic about owls is really hard to say, but think about me standing here right now, looking at you and talking to you.

We have big heads, all right, we have a relatively flat face.

We have symmetrical eyes about our nose and our ears.

Some of us have funky hairdos.

We look like owls, or owls look like us, a bit.

Gail Richards: There has never been a single bird that has created such a stir as that snowy owl did.

People ask, is she gonna go home?

And he said, "Yes, she's programmed to go home."

When it's time, she will turn around and go home.

Roy Rausch: Oh my gosh.

What's the word, Al?

Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: No luck again today.

Roy Rausch: What are we gonna do, man?

When Al left, I kind of thought maybe she would come back, and I was a little worried though, and then as days went on.

speaker: Check across the street.

Roy Rausch: It, you know, it affected me.

I was a little bummed, I mean, I have to say.

Josh Lindsay: I would pull up to the job; there wasn't 150 cars and 500 people on the street.

Frances Marquez: It was sad, you know, I felt like she broke my heart.

Allen "Wise Al" Egbert: It was kind of a loss, but the owl was going home, so that's where it needed to be.

Barbie Rodermund: Everyone was hoping that there would be sightings of her maybe on her way so we'd know she was safe.

Roy Rausch: There's been no observations that are credible anywhere else, and some people say, "I wish she was tracked, you know, I wish she got transponder or whatever."

Melissa Borde: People wondered if we were going to band and track the snowy owl, but, you know, we didn't feel at that time it was appropriate.

We didn't want to cause any stress to her, so we just closely monitored her.

Adam Ansari: It's my sincere hope that, instead of living on somebody's roof, she's on the tundra.

Denver Holt has said that there's a good chance that she could come back here.

Denver Holt: In many species, of birds in particular, will tend to come back to the same spots.

So she may come right back to that bay and fly back to that house, you never know.

Jyoti Vyas: I don't know where the snowy owl is, but she changed our lives.

♪♪♪ Adam Ansari: That was probably the worst month of work in my entire career.

The lawsuit is still looming, but, because of Snowy, I realized that I need to just move on and not let these things bother me now.

The owl was like magic medicine, and I think other people, you know, were probably using it in a similar way.

Jyoti Vyas: I met people I had never met in my neighborhood.

It was like my therapy.

I started saying to people, "I had a stroke," and I couldn't even say that before.

Roy Rausch: I think more people out there have problems than anyone realizes.

You could look at someone and think they've got everything in the world, but you may find out behind that that they really have a lot of issues and stress and problems in their life, and I saw that a lot during this whole Cypress snowy owl experience.

Frances Marquez: Before she came we had had a really tough election.

I, you know, I told the Washington Post we didn't look at each other for any of our differences.

She just brought people together.

Adam Ansari: We would have never met without the owl.

Roy Rausch: I think the chances are about 1 in a million.

Adam Ansari: But we definitely do snowy owl photography.

Roy Rausch: That's our bond.

Josh Newman: It's nice.

I think people need these stories.

People need these mini inspirations.

It reminds us what it means to be human, reminds us what it means to to live on this earth.

Roy Rausch: It brought that whole neighborhood much closer together.

The spirit that it brought into the community.

I hope that the Cypress snowy owl comes back.

I think that would uplift people again.

Jyoti Vyas: The snowy owl was just this miracle that came in my life and when I needed it.

I feel like I've just been hugged by a whole community, and it was through a snowy owl.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Welcome to the magic sky ♪ ♪ Sparkling ♪ ♪ A new meeting ♪ ♪ Wait, 'cause you matter ♪ ♪♪♪