NYT: Why We Love Flaco

Flaco in Central Park. He is almost certainly the only wild Eurasian eagle-owl in the United States. Credit: David Lei

Flaco’s new proficiency at hunting began to change people’s thinking about his future — rooting not for his safe return to the zoo, but for a new life of freedom.


By Michiko Kakutani
March 3, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

Excerpt:

In the Netherlands, where Eurasian eagle-owls have been kept as pets, some have escaped. And according to Marjon Savelsberg, an owl researcher there, a lot of those birds “return to the wild and learn, just like Flaco, how to survive. And some even nest and raise children with wild Eurasian eagle-owls.”

When Flaco was living at the zoo, he had been described by one longtime visitor as a grumpy and slightly pudgy owl — much like those of us stuck at home during the pandemic. But after only two weeks in Central Park, he had become an athletic and handsome prince, enthusiastically hooting his presence to claim his place in the city or find a possible mate.

After two weeks of freedom, Flaco couldn’t be found in any of his favorite spots. When he was discovered, a day later, some two miles north in the park, many New Yorkers breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t suffered the fate of Barry, or moved to the suburbs — he’d simply found a slightly wilder place to hang out in the 843-acre park.

Flaco’s eagle-owl relatives have adapted, on other continents, to living in forests and on steppes, mountains, farmlands and in cities — one Eurasian eagle-owl even raised three owlets on the windowsill of an apartment building in a Belgian city. And much the way that Barry had brought joy to New York during the darkest days of Covid, so Flaco gave a weary city still trying to come back from the pandemic a heartening sense of resilience.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/03/nyregion/flaco-owl-central-park-nyc.html