This character is a Other Symbol and is commonly used, that is, in no specific script.
The glyph is not a composition. Its East Asian Width is wide. In bidirectional text it acts as Other Neutral. When changing direction it is not mirrored. U+1F989 offers a line break opportunity at its position, except in some numeric contexts.
The CLDR project calls this character “owl” for use in screen reading software. It assigns these additional labels, e.g. for search in emoji pickers: bird, wise.
This character is designated as an emoji. It will be rendered as colorful emoji on conforming platforms. To reduce it to a monochrome character, you can combine it with Variation Selector-15: 🦉︎ See the Emojipedia for more details on this character’s emoji properties.
The Wikipedia has the following information about this codepoint:
Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers adapted for silent flight. Exceptions include the diurnal northern hawk-owl and the gregarious burrowing owl.
Owls are divided into two families: the true (or typical) owl family, Strigidae, and the barn-owl family, Tytonidae. Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish. They are found in all regions of the Earth except the polar ice caps and some remote islands.