Flaco: Owl on the Town

For a year, he was one of our most famous celebrities, celebrated for literally flying free and high above the city.

Still, The Year of Flaco, an exhibition at The New York Historical marking his New York life in photos and memorabilia, in some ways marks a sad anniversary. It’s been one year since the exotic bird, a Eurasian eagle-owl hatched in North Carolina in 2010, flew into a building—or fell from a building—on West 89th Street and was found dead in the courtyard. The necropsy revealed the presence of severe pigeon herpes virus and rodenticides, by-products of the owl’s diet, one rich in rats, mice, and feral pigeons. The raptor mastered flying and hunting only after his escape on Feb. 2, 2023, from the Central Park Zoo, after a vandal cut through the mesh screen in the enclosure where he was housed.

Aside from the dangers of navigating the city landscape, the fear was that a big owl would never be able to find enough food to survive in the urban jungle. But Flaco proved cunning and seemed to enjoy his newfound freedom. Attempts to capture him by the Wildlife Conservation Society, using bait stations and playbacks of Eurasian eagle-owl calls, were called off after two weeks.

So for one glorious, high-flying year, the year celebrated in this quintessentially New York show about a quintessential New Yorker (a striver, an immigrant, a flâneur), Flaco roamed free in Central Park and across Manhattan, venturing as far south as the Lower East Side before circling back uptown.

Roosting spots before flyouts after sunset for prey included an oak tree, ballfields, and a compost heap at the north end of Central Park, in addition to the myriad water towers, air conditioners, fire escapes, and rooftops that define the cityscape. The raptor’s movements were avidly chronicled on social media by birders and non-birders alike. He was a rock star, jetting around town like a native.

The sweet tribute to Flaco’s life and legacy in a hallway at the museum begins with an exhibit of 31 photos by nine photographers, including the work of David Lei and his partner, Jacqueline Emery, who obsessively followed the celebrity bird’s “hoot route” and recently self-published a book documenting the experience, Finding Flaco: One Year with New York City’s Beloved Owl.

A witty observation about owl behavior, in a caption accompanying a photo in the book: “Doing a ‘DeLorean’ stretch in Rumsey Playfield before flyout. We called this stretch the ‘DeLorean’ after an iconic car produced in the early 1980s and famously featured in the Back to the Future movies. The car had gull-wing doors that opened straight up.” The image of Flaco is included in the show, which to the delight of this visitor features a video montage with audio of his owl calls (“hoo . . . hoo”).

After his death on Feb. 23, 2024, mourners created a memorial at his favorite oak tree in Central Park, at the 102nd Street Crossing and East Drive. They left flowers, drawings, signs, handwritten letters, friendship bracelets, and stuffed animals—owls, so many owls, but rats, too.

Shortly before a memorial service at the site last March, Valerie Hartman, a runner and huge fan of the bird, contacted The New York Historical about archiving the memorabilia. Rebecca Klassen, curator of material culture, followed up with a visit to Hartman’s apartment to inspect the trove, where she met several other Flaco devotees. The group’s collective enthusiasm led them to suggest an exhibit timed to the anniversaries in February.

The museum will be acquiring a selection of the materials from the memorial, part of its History Responds initiative in which items documenting contemporary events are preserved and shared with the public. In a Meet the Curator tour on opening day, Klassen singled out her favorite letter, penned by a woman battling serious depression: “Seeing you peacefully rest in your tree turned the worst days around. And when I applied to law schools, I thought of you every time I felt like I would fail. You were the good luck charm I needed to succeed in that process.” Flaco was a balm. He helped people navigate adversity.

His story, of course, is a very New York story, about battling the odds in a challenging environment. He tapped into the mythos of the city, the idea that “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” which heightened his appeal, the curator said in an interview.

“He was an owl, and owls are very compelling to people,” she said. “There’s something about owls that really capture the human imagination. We view them as having a magical quality. He peered into people’s apartments. He was bringing magic into people’s homes.”

And he fostered community. “He brought New Yorkers together. We were all interested in how he was doing. Was he hunting successfully? And the communities that gathered at the base of whatever tree he was roosting in, that was a shared experience too, and I think it is really valuable when we can look to those moments in our collective history.”

The owl enhanced people’s lives and stimulated interest in birding, while also bringing renewed attention to legislative efforts to counter the dangers the bird population faces in a city with glass skyscrapers and a runaway rat population. For example, just days after Flaco’s death, New York State lawmakers renamed the Bird Safe Buildings Act, now known as the FLACO Act (“Feathered Lives Also Count”). Introduced in 2023, the bill would require use of “bird-friendly designs,” like vinyl-patterned glass for windows, in all new or significantly altered state buildings. His death also gave renewed energy to efforts to pass another bird-protective bill to reduce light pollution.

As Klassen said, “Flaco brought attention to the momentum that was already building for legislation, and he became a rallying cry for the urgent need to improve outcomes for birds. As several Flaco fans have said to me, we need to make his death and his life matter.”

The Year of Flaco at The New York Historical, 170 Central Park West (at 77th Street); through July 6, 2025.

https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/the-year-of-flaco