Last night I watched Flaco hunt at the compost heap. While the photographs of him look wonderful, the environment is far from it. He’s hunting in at three dumpsters in the middle of a staging site for the construction of the new rink/pool. I’m pointing this out because on social media, Flaco’s freedom continues to be celebrated as though he is living a full life. He’s living a different life than when he was in the zoo, but it’s now at a dump site, in an urban park. Far from a full life.

There are nights that with cloud cover, a moon and the city’s light pollution it is easy to photograph Flaco. On Friday night that wasn’t the case. It was dark!

He did another nice hunting run and ended up flying around with a Brown Rat.

After a brief period of Flaco exploring the area around the Compost Heap and Green Bench, he settled down on an excavator, before ending up in a tree for over an hour. It had rained and this interrupted is normal routine.

Flaco’s hunting skills have noticeably improved in recent weeks. When he started hunting months ago, he would pounce on his prey. Over the last week, I’ve seen him make three wonderful passes at Brown Rats, where he catches the rat and keeps flying. He swoops down, you see him catch the rodent, hear a squeal, and he then flies to tree with a level branch to eat without ever needing to be on the ground. He’s doing this while weaving through fences and bushes.

On Sunday, I watched the Eurasian Eagle-Owl for a few hours after fly out at the Compost Heap. He made some loops around the area early on before settling into his favorite tree. He caught a rat late in the evening and ate it quickly on a pile of compost before returning to his favorite tree.

I had a chance to catch up with Flaco on both Tuesday and Thursday nights. He’s hunting up at the compost heap most nights now, skipping the construction site.

On Thursday, he flew right past me and caught a rat, which we heard squeal as it got caught. He caught it and continued flying, returning to the tree he had been perched in. He ate the rat on a low level branch. As a few of us photographed him, we watched the light change from Green to Yellow to Red as a stop light 100 feet away was the primary light source.