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Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl, whose February escape from the Central Park Zoo captured the public’s attention in New York and beyond, turned up in Manhattan’s East Village on Monday, about five miles from the wooded park area he had settled into since flying free.
Just before 5 pm, Flaco, who had spent most of the past nine months in and around the park’s North Woods section, could be seen perched on a tree branch in a sculpture garden next to Kenkeleba House, an artists’ space on East Second Street between Avenues B and C.
About five minutes later, he swooped down, turned left and found a landing spot on a building on East Third Street, sitting placidly between two shrubs, silhouetted against the twilight sky. A few minutes later, he flew off again, headed east to points unknown.
It appeared to be the first significant foray outside the park for Flaco, who quickly learned how to fend for himself after fleeing the zoo, feasting on a steady diet of rats despite fears that his having lived his entire 13-year-life in captivity had dulled his survival instincts.
Several wildlife photographers and bird enthusiasts were at the garden to document Flaco’s Alphabet City stop. It was unclear when he had arrived, but David Barrett, who was there and who operated the Manhattan Bird Alert account on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, said he had gotten a tip about Flaco’s whereabouts earlier in the day.
Mr. Barrett said he had contacted Kenkeleba House and had asked Corrine Jennings, the director, to open the garden so that he and other Flaco followers could get a look at the owl in a new setting.
“That was very surprising,” Ms. Jennings said, “to get a call about a bird.”
Flaco was last seen in Central Park last Tuesday, according to Mr. Barrett and the others with their cameras trained on the owl Monday. The group speculated that he might have been scared out of the park by the fireworks set off there Friday as part of the New York City Marathon festivities.
David Lei, a photographer who was at the sculpture garden, said he and others had been searching for Flaco since last week and had grown concerned about his well-being. Mr. Lei said he was relieved to have finally seen him again, and in apparent good health. I have suggested that Flaco might be in search of a mate.
Flaco could be entering a dangerous new phase of his life on the loose. Bird experts interviewed in the immediate aftermath of his escape cited crashing into a vehicle and consuming rat poison as two of the gravest potential hazards he faced.
New York City’s parks department does not use rodenticides on its properties, limiting Flaco’s exposure to such poisons as long as he stayed on parks land. And there is significantly more vehicular traffic outside Central Park than inside it.
For a time after Flaco escaped, employees of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the zoo, tried to retrieve him with baited traps. (He narrowly dodged one such attempt.)
Within a couple of weeks, though, the society said it would abandon those efforts but would continue to monitor him. A society advocate did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Flaco’s latest adventure.
Mr. Lei, in a post on X later in the evening, acknowledged concern about how Flaco might fare after venturing out of the park, but he expressed something else too.
“I was worried to see Flaco in the East Village,” he wrote. “But part of celebrating his freedom and pursuit of happiness is understanding that he is writing his own story now.”
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