Super Bowl weekend was a “superb owl” weekend at the New York Historical for the opening of “The Year of the Flaco.” Roughly a year since the famous bird’s passing and two years since his escape from the Central Park Zoo, the exhibit and several books, including Jonathan Hollingsworth’s “FLACO: The Owl Who Escaped Captivity and Won the Hearts of the World,” recount the New York City phenomenon.
Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl, arrived in the Big Apple almost immediately after hatching in North Carolina on March 15, 2010. He remained in a zoo enclosure until Feb. 2, 2023, when an unknown individual released him. Flaco spread his wings to fly freely for the first time of his life.
After eluding several recapture attempts, the owl spent the next year learning to soar and hunt around Manhattan before his sudden death from flying into an Upper West Side building on Feb. 23, 2024. Postmortem testing revealed underlying conditions from eating wild pigeons and exposure to rodenticide, which probably would have killed him independent of the collision.
“Freedom is the source component of [Flaco’s] story,” said Hollingsworth. “He was released, he got out, [and] he wasn’t captured … The other component is untaming himself and learning how to be a wild owl because up to that point, he didn’t know how to. The element of living according to your own nature and your own instinct for individuals is really powerful because most people are going through their lives and having a private dialogue with themselves of ‘what is it that I have to do to survive and what is the kind of life that I want to be living.’
“Flaco went from the two extremes of living for other people to living for himself and doing exactly what he wanted and experiencing the world on his own terms for the first time.”
After following the story in the news and over social media, Hollingsworth embedded himself with a small group who dubbed themselves the “Friends of Flaco” while documenting objects left at the owl’s memorial under a favored oak tree by 104th Street. Hollingworth was always drawn to personal effects, previously publishing books with photos of belongings from those who died crossing the United States-Mexico border from the Sonoran Desert. “Oftentimes, those objects were all that was left to identify this individual,” he said.
People have dropped off everything from artwork to a note written on a Cuban peso. They penned 32 letters thanking the bird for helping them get through various personal trials, like a law school application and a breakup. Under a pencil-and-marker drawing of the owl with the words “Fly High Flaco!,” one mourner simply known as “T.L.” expressed anxiety-turned-gratitude: “I have been worrying about you since your escape a year ago. But have been inspired, dazzled, and joyful about how you overcame the doubts and made it on your own. Hope your year was amazing … your memory will live on!!”
The memorial reached 257 items. Friends of Flaco also came into contact with Rebecca Klassen, New York Historical’s curator of material culture, who began visiting the memorial collection late last May and received a green light for the exhibit in June.
“Exhibitions often come together with the help of community members, but given the short lead time for this one, the knowledge and connections provided by this small group were essential,” said Klassen by email. “They had also already done a fair amount of legwork, whether it was generating photo documentation of all of the memorial objects or conducting research on Flaco and other Eurasian eagle owls.”
Many of the objects delineated in Hollingsworth’s book are on display. While excerpts address conservation efforts, including relevant concerns about the H5 bird flu, the heart of the exhibit grapples with the impression an owl native to Europe, Asia, and North Africa left on a city in transition.
“People were able to look up and find him in the park and see something of tremendous beauty [and mystery],” said Hollingsworth. “He was here in the city, he stayed here and he was accessible, and he returned to the same spots again and again, so people were able to build relationships with him. [Flaco] was something magical, and who doesn’t need that in a rather bleak time?”
“Through Flaco and this exhibition, I’ve become a superfan of owls and birds in general,” added Klassen. “They are all special, and we are lucky to live among them. This may sound strange, but Flaco is like a gateway to collectively envisioning a future in which we can all find resourcefulness, courage, and the realization of our fullest potential. That, in a sense, is the spirit of New York.”
“Year of Flaco” runs through July 6 at the New York Historical.
“FLACO: The Owl Who Escaped Captivity and Won the Hearts of the World” was released on Monday, Feb. 11 and can be purchased at the museum’s gift shop. For more info, visit nyhistory.org.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
Author’s Note: An extra “it” was removed from Hollingsworth’s quote about Flaco in “a rather bleak time.”