Flaco had been out of the zoo for two months on Sunday night It’s been fascinating to watch him acclimate to life outside of his zoo cage. He surprised everyone by how well he’s been doing adjusting to life in the wild. He’s carved out a niche for himself in the north end of Central Park, and has fallen into a fairly consistent routine.

This next month will be an interesting time to watch him. The trees are going to be leafing out and we will have numerous spring migrants arriving. How theses changes impact him, and how he impacts our spring arrivals and nesting birds will be what I’ll be studying this month.

On Sunday night, Flaco flew all around the north end of the park for at least an hour. The three of us watching him certainly got our “steps in”. Eventually he settled down and parked himself on a small mound opposite a dumpster, but flew off when a park truck came to offload some recyclables.

Later he flew to a Black Locust and after about fifteen minutes, flew across the East Drive and onto a small lawn. We thought he was just going there to hunt, but he had caught a small rodent, either a White-Footed Mouse or an immature Brown Rat. It was only when he started to eat it, did we realize he had caught something he had seen 100 yards away.

We had invited two police officers to watch with us, and two of their colleagues joined us. They all got to see Flaco eat and fly off, via a monitor mounted on my tripod. They were excited to see Flaco, and they shared news that they had seen a coyote earlier in the evening.