Finding Refuge, and a Snowy Owl, in Central Park When pandemic New York seemed at its most surreal, the park, with its abundant wildlife and familiar progression of the seasons, offered a vision of normal life to a book critic who wandered it daily. Central Park’s Bridge No. 28, near the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. March 4, 2021 It was a chilly Saturday night in February and there was more than a foot of snow in Central Park, along with slippery patches of black ice and slushy, calf-high puddles. But some 200 New Yorkers carefully made their way to the Reservoir in hopes of catching a glimpse of the magical snowy owl, who had touched down in the park the week before in what was reported as the first visit there by the species in more than 130 years.