The year that Flaco the owl has roamed free
It started with a brazen act in the heart of Manhattan.
After dusk on a frosty evening at the Central Park Zoo, someone shredded the mesh on an enclosure that was home to a Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco.
Before long, Flaco was spotted a few blocks away on Fifth Avenue. Nobody knew where this bird with fiery-orange eyes had come from, and soon he was off to a tree by the Pulitzer Fountain, outside the Plaza Hotel. A tourist with wings.
Call it an escape, a release, a departure, a crime — Flaco was free. Could he fend for himself after a lifetime in captivity?
A year later, the answer is definitely yes. He has spent most of his time in Central Park, although he has wandered all over Manhattan, peering into apartment windows with his striking eyes.
Flaco has captured the public's attention in New York and beyond, an underdog and feel-good figure in troubled times. Birders and fans track him in person or follow his exploits online. But how has he experienced New York? What does the city look, feel and sound like from his bird's-eye view?
`Freaked out'
Edmund Berry was heading home to the Upper West Side late on Feb. 2, 2023, when he saw a picture on Twitter of an owl on a sidewalk. An avid birder, he got off the subway at Columbus Circle and headed toward Fifth Avenue near East 60th Street, ready to help.
He did not initially recognize Flaco, whom he knew from trips to the zoo with his daughter to visit the penguins. Berry had always paused for a look, thinking Flaco's life seemed lonely and sad.
On this night, he saw Flaco bathed in flashing red lights next to a small pet carrier as police officers looked on. When they dropped a larger carrier nearby, Flaco spread his wings and flew off toward the Plaza.
He hatched in captivity at a North Carolina bird park on March 15, 2010, and soon arrived at the Central Park Zoo. Within a short time, Flaco was “adjusting very well to his new home,” the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoo, said in a news release.
He was far from his natural home: Eurasian eagle-owls, known by the scientific name Bubo bubo, are apex predators typically found in much of continental Europe, Scandinavia, Russia and Central Asia. They are among the world's largest owls, with a wingspan of up to 6 feet, and thrive in mountains and other rocky areas near forests, swooping down at night to hunt rodents, rabbits and other prey. But they also have been known to hang out in cities, where terraces, windowsills and rooftops resemble the cliff ledges they are used to.
Now, out on the Manhattan streetscape, Flaco appeared lost.
Karla Bloem, executive director of the International Owl Center in Houston, Minnesota, said he looked “freaked out” and “terrified” in pictures from that first night and the following days.
Over the next couple of weeks, though, as he settled into the park and eluded the zoo's efforts to retrieve him, Bloem detected a transformation in his pictures.
“His ear tufts are down,” she said. “He's puffier. He was certainly getting comfortable with his surroundings.”
On the hunt
For a while, zoo workers tried to lure Flaco back using traps baited with dead rats, but he was unmoved.
He learned to hunt his own food instead. The proof: a pellet of undigested rat fur and bone he coughed up one day.
He was lucky. Central Park was a “target-rich environment,” in the words of James Eyring, a falconer and a retired Pace University environmental sciences professor.
“When they see that movement, that herky-jerky movement that rodents have, I mean, that's like passing by the McDonald's arches,” Eyring said.
Flaco became a fixture in and around the North Woods and the Loch, hunting nearby at a compost pile and a construction site where internet pictures of him hang in a trailer.
It was an efficient life, said David Lei, a birder and photographer who has followed him closely.
“He would sleep at the compost heap, wake up, hop over a few trees to a favorite perch and then hunt for rats,” Lei said.
`Just a matter of time'
Since November, Flaco has been mostly out of the park and the public eye, roaming from the West 70s to the West 90s, from Central Park West to West End Avenue. Birders such as David Barrett, who runs the Manhattan Bird Alert account on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, have monitored his every move.
During daylight, Flaco camps out in apartment building courtyards, sleeping in seclusion where he is warmer and out of the wind. As impressive as his survival has been, his future is not guaranteed.
Rat poison is probably the biggest threat as he roams. Because of poison restrictions in the park, he is safest eating there.
“I frankly find the whole situation unfortunate,” said Scott Weidensaul, author of the “Peterson Reference Guide to Owls,” adding, “It's really just a matter of time before something bad happens.”
D. Bruce Yolton agrees, although he would be happy to be proved wrong.
Yolton, a birder and a blogger, has followed Flaco since he saw him the night he got out. He believes Flaco has not been served
well by many people, including those who make light of his release or ignore the danger he faces.
Eurasian eagle-owls live about 20 years in the wild on average. Their life span in captivity can be double that or more. Yolton would prefer that Flaco retire to a spacious sanctuary.
Whoever set him loose in the first place remains at large, too. The investigation is continuing, police said.
Flaco's former enclosure was empty last week. There are no plans to reuse it. He is no longer listed among the zoo's animals, although an image of an owl indicating where Flaco once lived is still on a map outside the zoo.
The conservation society said in a statement that it had been monitoring Flaco and appreciated the public's concern for his well-being. “As noted previously, we are prepared to resume recovery efforts if he shows any sign
of difficulty or distress,” the statement said.
Mary Aaron thought she might have seen a sign of distress around midnight Jan. 11.
She was at home in her 20thfloor apartment on Central Park West near 97th Street when she heard hooting coming from her balcony.
She called police at the 24th Precinct and said she thought an owl might need help.
“Is that that famous big owl that's flying around?” an officer said.
Two officers arrived a short time later and shooed the owl away by shining a flashlight in its eyes, Aaron said.
Police confirmed that officers had responded to a call about an owl at Aaron's address. They could not say whether it was Flaco. (Owls do not carry ID.)
There was one telling detail: The owl in question “had a large wingspan.”