For the last few weeks I have been glued to Twitter following the whereabouts of one of Manhattan’s most famous residents.
No, it’s not the exploits of an Oscar-winning A-lister falling out of a nightclub at 3am after overdoing it on champagne and cocktails.
Instead it is the movements of a 13-year-old Eurasian eagle owl, which escaped from New York’s Central Park Zoo last month after someone vandalised the steel mesh of his enclosure.
Ever since, Flaco has been flying out from new locations within the Park each evening followed by a crowd of birders.
“I’ve had a few celebrity birds – the mandarin duck was the first in 2018,” said David Barrett, who runs the Twitter account Manhattan Bird Alert and has been tracking Flaco’s movements.
The eagle owl, one of the world’s largest species, came to the zoo during its first year and then spent the next 12 in captivity. In the wild, they range from the coast of Portugal to the Russian Far East.
The closest the zoo has come to recapturing him was shortly after his escape, when staff placed a small cage with a white lab rat inside.
After 10 days on the loose in the park, the zoo issued a statement.
Raptors raised in captivity generally cannot hunt because they have to learn from a parent. But Flaco was feasting and was spotted regurgitating some bones and fur.
The zoo added it would have to “rethink” its approach given his newfound hunting abilities.
Flaco spent Valentine’s Day in a wooded part of the Park known as the Ramble, near the usual spot of a great horned owl named Geraldine, who has lived in Central Park since January 2022 – longer than any other owl on record.
Then a rumour spread among the birders that the zoo was trying to lure Flaco into a cage with a female Eurasian eagle owl.
Flaco the Eurasian Eagle-Owl is resting above the north end of the Central Park Loch near Huddlestone Arch on this Sunday morning.
— Manhattan Bird Alert (@BirdCentralPark)
Efforts were intensified to keep eyes on Flaco on what his followers believed might be his last night of freedom.
Zoo staff returned multiple times that night to try to catch him again with one birder posted a photo and writing: “I just told them the world is watching.”
The zoo has now decided it will pause its efforts to “recover” Flaco for the time being.
In the meantime, he remains at liberty in Central Park, still managing to feed himself and still being tracked by his ever-growing army of followers.
