Flaco’s death wasn’t a window collision or some other cause. It was science denial.

To borrow the title from Davis Guggenheim’s film of Al Gore discussing climate change, Flaco’s story has an inconvenient truth. A Eurasian Eagle-Owl raised by humans and not native to North America, released into Manhattan would have a lifespan outside the zoo of less than eighteen months.

Flaco’s life outside of the zoo, was not a wonderful life where he was a free and wild bird. He was a feral bird in an urban purgatory where he would be alone forever. New Yorkers choose to ignore the risks Flaco would face in Manhattan, and the risk he might become to native wildlife.

It was much more fun to enjoy wonderful images of him, keep track of his location, read cute stories of him being a “Peeping Tom”, catch a glimpse of him, listen to him hooting or fantasize that he was living his “best life” flying free, than to work to recover him.

We selfishly ignored the truth and simply let him die. We did not love him.

We were intrigued and infatuated with him, but we failed to protect him. Even birders who knew the city was an unsafe place for Flaco, let their bias against captivity prevent them from speaking out. When the zoo announced after only two weeks that it was giving up on capturing Flaco, there should have been protests not celebration.

It was never a simple story of “zoo bad, freedom good”. Flaco could easily have been recaptured in the first few months, if the zoo had worked to control the narrative and had immediately hired the correct people. Once recovered, public pressure would have then forced the zoo to build Flaco a better enclosure or he could have been placed with an owl sanctuary. It was never a binary choice of a small cage or Manhattan.

The inconvenient truth got in the way of gaining social media followers, taking a photograph, publishing “feel good” news stories, filming a documentary, selling merchandise, painting murals, and protecting a zoo’s reputation.

A radical animal activist released him without considering the risks. It was the act of an anarchist, who was willing to cut short an owl’s life to prove a point. No large owl has lived in Manhattan for more than 18 months in the last few decades. Flaco wasn’t being released to some alpine forest. Flaco was simply being used as a pawn in a battle over zoos.

This radical animal activist was celebrated as a hero by many. Would we celebrate someone letting a parrot out of its cage, or dumping a house cat in Central Park? No. So, why did we celebrate Flaco’s release? And why did we applaud an anarchist?

Flaco’s fate was sealed during the first two weeks of his life outside the zoo. A perfect storm of a social media influencer who loved to be in front of television cameras while pretending to be an expert, the media looking for that happy and positive special interest story and a zoo administration without a leader with a P.R. policy of non-engagement, turned the public from understanding that Flaco need to be captured to wanting him to stay free.

After Flaco’s release from the zoo, any media publicity, especially publicity that would invite the public to watch any rescue efforts would hamper his capture.

However, this occurred due to a campaign by David Barrett via his X account, the Manhattan Bird Alert, to cast Flaco’s release not as a misguided criminal act, but as a chance for an invasive species to live happily in New York City. David Barrett, as he did with a Mandarin Duck, Snowy Owl and a Barred Owl, has a habit of turning birds into celebrities, not for the benefit of the bird, but to promote his social media account and to get himself in the print and television media.

The media got duped by David Barrett and others with Flaco. Major media outlets, including The New York Time and the Wall Street Journal assigned metro desk reporters, not reporters who normally covered science and nature topics to cover Flaco. Reporters treated the story as an urban phenomenon, rather than focusing on what was the right action to protect Flaco and the native species he would interact with.

How different would the reporting have been in The New York Times if the story had gotten covered by someone on the Science Times staff? We would have had real experts telling the truth about Flaco’s future outside of the zoo rather than a social media influencer shaping a self-serving narrative. It wouldn’t have been an upbeat story, but it would have put pressure on the zoo to recover Flaco.

The zoo, which only had an acting President after Cristián Samper’s departure, chose not to have a spokesperson present the zoo’s position and gain public support. Their employees are all under NDAs and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has a “don’t engage” policy regarding animal activists. Their only public comments before his death were three press releases and I believe one tweet from Robert G. “Robb” Menzi, then acting President of WCS. They quickly lost control of public opinion and doomed Flaco to an early death.

The crowds David Barrett sent to the first few rescues made it impossible to catch Flaco. Especially on the first real attempt to catch him on the Hechsher Ballfields. He would have been caught if it wasn’t for the public that was invited by David Barrett to come watch Flaco. Just before dusk with only five people watching Flaco’s roost, David Barrett sent a tweet with Flaco’s location and thirty people arrived within minutes and David Barrett continued to broadcast Flaco’s minute-by-minute location throughout the evening. If David Barrett was an ethical person, he would have asked people to avoid the ballfields to allow the WCS team to work. Instead, with crowds of people, Flaco only made one real attempt to come down to the traps, and by some bad luck managed to free himself from the trap. Later that night, he was seen catching his first rat making the future rescue efforts harder.

The next week at the last rescue attempt, a rehabber and the zoo staff were very, very close to capturing Flaco. The WCS had finally gotten an expert rehabber, who knew how to use audio recordings in addition to traps to capture Flaco. However, David Barrett baited a “Free Flaco” follower into harassing the rescue efforts and they had to be halted. This rehabber even got death threats!

So, the acting president of the zoo, Robert G. “Robb” Menzi, choose to halt all rescue efforts after only two weeks, against the advice of the Central Park Zoo staff. Clearly, public relations took precedence over science.

The public and the media believes that the zoo just gave up, because after beginning to hunt on his own, Flaco was too hard to catch. This is simply not true. He could have been caught up until he left Central Park.

I talked to the rehabber working to return Flaco to safety early that last evening. I asked him, “Whose side are you on, those who want Flaco to be free or the zoo?” His answer was perfect. He looked at me and said, “I’m on Flaco’s side.”

It’s too bad more of us hadn’t been on Flaco’s side.

When I first started watching Pale Male and the Red-tailed Hawk nest at 927 Fifth Avenue in 2005, I had my first experience with a celebrity bird. I learned then that the public perception of Pale Male didn’t match his reality. Rather than observing Pale Male people wanted to repeat back what they had learned from Marie Winn’s book, Red-tails in Love or Frederic Lilien’s movies, Pale Male and The Legend of Pale Male.

I would observe Pale Male in Central Park’s Ramble drinking water and taking a bath and then walk to the “hawk bench”, which had a great view of 927 Fifth Avenue and the nearby buildings. When I would relay this information to Pale Male fans, I would often have people question my observations. Generally, these were people who only came to watch Pale Male a few weeks a year, and only from the hawk bench. They would say “hawks don’t drink water”. Hawks, especially eyasses on the nest, can get all the water they need from their food, but once off the nest, if given a chance they will drink water. But a group of folks had taken this to mean they don’t drink water at all, and believed it to gospel.

This happened with lots of other observation as well. It always frustrated me because I thought the greatest joy of watching Pale Male and his family was that we got to make direct observations year round of species and learn more than was ever possible just reading. Watching him was so great because every day was different, and I saw things I had never read about in books. For example, If a newly fledged offspring was being mobbed, Pale Male would come in and get the jays to go after him. Or how each year, he would hunt around the Alexander Hamilton statue in the fall after the apples began to fall as it attracted rodents. Or how he would be out of sight, but if his mate called for him to relieve her on the nest, he would quickly arrive and often have food.

These direct observations, and sharing and debating their meaning with others in person, was the joy of watching Pale Male.

I also learned early on that the folks crafting him public image, had a vested interest in molding his image. I created this blog, because Marie Winn who I had been sharing photographs for her Central Park Nature News website, refused to publish a wonderful series of photograph of Pale Male eating a Brown Rat. She said to me, “these pictures would upset my audience”. It was a nice lesson to learn. That folks who rode the coattails of a celebrity bird had a vested interest to only report the “bright side”.

Sadly, this “bright side” distortion and a failure of the general public to question the reporting, is occurring today. It is even worse now that the communications have shifted from blogs to social media.

When I got back from California in late November, I ran into a number that of people who said the reason Flaco left Central Park was because of crows and hawk. Of the any number of reasons Flaco left the park, this is low on the list.

I asked folks, why they thought this and they said they had read it on the Manhattan Bird alert. So, I looked at X. This is the set of posts from David Barrett.

I believe Mr. Barrett crafted a response to answer criticism of his reporting the roost locations of Flaco in the North Woods, rather than giving a scientifically based answer. I was in California on the two days Flaco returned to the park, but many experienced birders felt the crowds on both days bothered him, and might have contributed to his leaving the park again.

So, I’d like to give an alternative perspective.

1. Flaco was harassed by many birds during his nine months of roosting in Central Park. Crows, Blue Jays, Red-tailed Hawks, Baltimore Orioles and Northern Mockingbirds among others. It was a daily occurrence, and quite natural. Flaco held his own in the face of these attacks. I doubt these attacks were ever the reason he shifted roosts. He’s an apex predator!
   As far as the Tennis Court roosts go, I think most of us who watched him during that period, saw Flaco be very aggressive with a Red-tailed Hawk who was working to claim the area. In the end, Flaco drove the hawk away, and once he did he returned to his preferred American Elm. So, it is more likely that Flaco forced the Red-tailed Hawk to relocate then the other way around.
2. Flaco did and does get disturbed by human observers. David’s statement that he doesn’t is false. It’s common sense that birds and animals get disturbed by human observers. Everyone knows this. Birders work hard to minimize their impact. With owls it is common practice not to share their roosting locations publicly to protect the owls from being disturbed during the day. All of the true bird alerts run by the NYC community (rather than David Barrett’s self run Manhattan Bird Alert), have rules against reporting owl roost locations. (And why does Mr. Barrett use the royal “we”?)
   While it was possible to watch Flaco without disturbing him, there were many inexperienced or very aggressive owl watchers who did disturb him. You would see him be awoken midday and see his change in body posture. He also hated the off leash dogs people brought under his roosts. There was even a time where an observer took a stick to wake Flaco up so he could photograph him awake.
   Flaco’s returning to a roost location day after day, or any owl (such the Saw-whet Owl in Shakespeare Garden, Geraldine (Great Horned Owl) or Barry (Barred Owl) shouldn’t be used as a way to justify publicizing a roost location. Rationalizing irresponsible behavior by saying “Well if the owl didn’t like people, they would move”, doesn’t cut it. I doubt the subject of roost location has been studied well enough to determine the instinctual reasons why birds choose a specific roost and what makes them abandon a location.
3. Why Flaco left the park most likely isn’t because he was being mobbed. If it really bothered him, he would have left months ago. There were a great number of factors to consider about why he left the park.
   
   a. As the days got shorter, a male Eurasian Eagle-Owl would become more focused on securing his territory, investigating to see if there was a competitor nearby, and looking for an appropriate nesting location. Early November was the perfect time for these instincts to be awakened in Flaco. His looking for a mate would start a bit later. Central Park doesn’t have a suitable nest location for Flaco.
   Eurasian Eagle-Owls don’t build nests. They use cliffs, take over other raptor nests, and in some very rural locations nest on the ground. In European cities, they have nested on Cathedrals and in one case even used someone’s flower box.
   So, after Flaco discovered quiet gardens and the backs of buildings to roost on during his first trip away from the park, and after coming back for two days with his regular roosts surrounded by noisy people and being mobbed by birds, he may have realized his best options was to roost in a quiet block, but still stay close to Central Park where he can still hunt. Many of us hope that he continues to roost near Central Park, and then hunt in the park, where the rodents are less likely to have rodenticide.
   
   But since Flaco is an exception to the rule, it is hard to know what he’s doing. Will he take longer trips away, say to other areas of Manhattan, when it is closer to his time to mate? We just have to wait and see.
   
   b. The trees were just starting to lose their leaves when Flaco left, and by now his regular root trees are bare. This could have made the park less attractive than it was this summer. (Update 12/20/23: Another factor may be the windy weather. Flaco has been roosting in light wells on the back of buildings on both the Upper East and Upper West Sides. These might be giving him protection from the wind and be warmer as the temperatures drop rather than roosting in a tree without leaves.)
   
   c. As Flaco becomes more used to his environment, he should start behaving more and more like a wild Eurasian Eagle-Owl rather than a feral bird. Central Park is 3.41 km² and Manhattan is 59 km² in size. Scientific studies about Eurasian Eagle-Owl territory sizes are limited but the Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity has an excellent open access paper, Analysis of Home Range of Eurasian Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) by WT-100. The home ranges varied from 4.2 km² to 39.1 km² for the owls studied in the paper. So, we should have expected Flaco to expand his range beyond Central Park’s 3.41 km². There didn’t need to be any reason he left Central Park, other than it was a smaller territory than would have been natural for an Eurasian Eagle-Owl.

Flaco is becoming much harder to find these days. His was seen just inside the park on Saturday night, and was seen the previous two Saturday’s along Central Park West. He has gone undetected on many days. When and if he returns to roosting in the park, we should take care not to love him too much.

Central Park has had an active rescue operation to recapture Flaco for over a week. Staff from the Wildlife Conservation Society have been active every day from sunrise to about midnight.

This week, I’ve always been careful to do avoid interrupting the work of the zoo staff. They are incredibly good at what they’re doing and have a team in the evenings of at least ten people, if not more, working to bring him home.

As enjoyable it is to study this owl exploring the park, our first responsibility is to make sure none of us gets in the way of getting this owl back home to the zoo.

Unfortunately, publicity about this owl hasn’t come with a warning to stay out of the way of the zoo staff, especially after dark. Last night, David Barrett used his Manhattan Bird Alert to tweet in real time about the evening’s rescue efforts. By informing so many people and not making sure his followers knew how to act, he put Flaco at risk.

The rescue efforts are using a trap commonly used by bird banders to capture raptors. To lure an owl to this trap, you must stay far away from it and do everything you can to make the owl feel relaxed enough to pounce on the trap. Last night, the zoo staff was staying as far away and stationary as possible from the traps, except for one or two staff members staying close enough to net the owl if it came to the trap, often using trees to help hide.

The gawkers and photographs who came in response to David Barrett’s tweets didn’t understand how to act responsibly during the rescue effort. They had no awareness of traps or how important it was to stay far away from them. Most didn’t even have binoculars and often went as close as possible with their cell phones! So, in some instances folks ended up making it impossible for the owl to feel comfortable coming down to the traps or delayed the owl from trying. What should have been a night where the owl made multiple attempts at the traps, he only come down twice. Once where he didn’t get caught well enough to be netted, and a second time where a dog barked and charged him when he got landed on the ground close to the trap which caused him to fly off.

The crowd also chased the owl after fly out. While the zoo staff needs to run after him to keep track of him, everyone else needs to be aware that they can “push” the bird. In the beginning of the evening, he didn’t settle down, but kept going from tree to tree. Experienced birders know how to let a bird settle down before approaching them, to not continually push them to the next tree and then the next. This “pushing” of the owl happened last night due to the number of onlookers rushing after him.

I did my best to talk to onlookers and dog owners to have them stay clear of the rescue efforts but couldn’t get to everyone. 

If David Barrett wants to invite folks to crash someone else’s party, he at least needs to tell them how to behave. Better yet, he should let the Wildlife Conservation Society choose want folks they want to come to their recovery effort. Exploiting this owl for “likes and follows” could be deadly.