I for one welcome our new strygine overlord. :)
Backstory: This gentleman escaped from Central Park Zoo in March after his enclosure there was vandalized, and there was a lot of concern over whether or not he could/would survive out of captivity. Unconcerned by this, Flaco settled himself in a particular area of Central Park and spent all the spring, summer, and most of the fall eating large numbers of rats, and genially allowing himself to be photographed by an ever-growing cadre of bird paparazzi.
Then a few weeks ago, possibly irked by repeated mobbing by assorted hawks and corvids, Flaco took off from his normal haunts and went on a brief tour of apartment-building courtyards on the Lower East Side. Now he's on the Upper West Side, within sight of Central Park (so food's no problem, should he feel like heading back that way to hunt), and shouting for everybody to hear that he owns the place. The image above shows him on the water tower of an apartment building at 86th and CPW.
If you look back through the Manhattan Bird Alert and Above 96th Twitter feeds, you'll see many splendid pictures of him. He's a handsome lad, and it's good to see him thriving.
What's in his future? Hard to tell. (Though some people on Twitter are suggesting he should run for mayor.) He may head upstate at some point. But he may decide he's quite happy to be a Manhattanite. As a fellow one, I wish him very well. :)
I love that an animal escaped from the zoo and everyone just went "no let's see where he's going with this"
as someone who has actually tried to get an unflighted adult Eurasian eagle owl back into his box while actually having a good grip on him, I can tell you with reasonable certainty there is no damn way they were ever going to catch him again.
