Flaco the Owl's Wings to Be Kept at American Museum of Natural History

By Ed Shanahan
May 28, 2024

Partial remains of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl whose escape from the Central Park Zoo and year on the loose enthralled New York City before his death in February, will be kept at a museum near where he spent most of his life, zoo officials said on Tuesday.

Flaco’s wings and tissue samples have been transferred to the American Museum of Natural History, where they will become part of the scientific collections, according to a statement from the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Central Park Zoo.

The collections are “used extensively by scientists and also by artists who develop images for educational materials, including birding field guides,” the society said in the statement, which noted that the remains would not be on public view.

The tissue samples will be kept in the museum’s frozen tissue specimen collection, the society said. The rest of Flaco’s remains have been archived at the Bronx Zoo’s Wildlife Health Center.

For the last several months of his life, Flaco was a roving fixture on the Upper West Side, ranging from Central Park to Riverside Drive, from the 70s to the 90s, perching on roof tops and water towers and hooting for hours into the darkness.

A part of him will now remain nearby in perpetuity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/nyregion/flaco-owl-natural-history-museum.html