Most Christmas trees are decorated with sparkling lights and shiny ornaments. But on rare occasions, they also harbor a holiday surprise: wildlife. 

In New York City, workers moving the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree recently discovered a saw-whet owl hanging out among the massive branches before it was eventually rescued and released back into the wild.

“Saw-whet owls are well known to roost against the trunk of evergreen trees, which probably is what this individual was doing when the tree was cut down,” said Christopher Moorman, a professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University.

Moorman, whose research interests include avian ecology, added that a small population of saw-whet owls breed in the highest elevations of the Southern Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina.

But while many saw-whet owls will roost in evergreen trees during the winter, they primarily use Christmas tree farms as hunting grounds, according Jeff Owen, an Extension Forestry specialist at NC State who focuses on Christmas tree production.  

“Owls may temporarily roost in a tree,” Owen said. “But most of the time, they’re just flying over and hunting rodents and other small mammals in the fields.”

If an owl were to roost in a Christmas tree in the Southeast, it would likely be an Eastern screech owl, according to Moorman. The small owls often occur in dense patches of evergreens during the winter.

Moorman added that most owls are nocturnal and try to conceal themselves by roosting in trees during the day. They usually fly away if disturbed by humans or other wildlife.