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Celebrity Owl Flaco Dies a Year after Becoming Beloved by New York City for Zoo Escape

A Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco sits in a tree in New York's Central Park, Feb. 6, 2023. (AP)
A Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco sits in a tree in New York's Central Park, Feb. 6, 2023. (AP)
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Celebrity Owl Flaco Dies a Year after Becoming Beloved by New York City for Zoo Escape

A Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco sits in a tree in New York's Central Park, Feb. 6, 2023. (AP)
A Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco sits in a tree in New York's Central Park, Feb. 6, 2023. (AP)

Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from New York City’s Central Park Zoo and became one of the city’s most beloved celebrities as he flew around Manhattan, has died, zoo officials announced Friday.

A little over one year after he was freed from his cage at the zoo in a criminal act that has yet to be solved, Flaco appears to have collided with an Upper West Side building, the zoo said in a statement.

“The vandal who damaged Flaco’s exhibit jeopardized the safety of the bird and is ultimately responsible for his death,” the statement said. “We are still hopeful that the NYPD which is investigating the vandalism will ultimately make an arrest.”

Staff from the Wild Bird Fund, a wildlife rehabilitation center, responded to the scene and declared Flaco dead shortly after the collision. He was taken to the Bronx Zoo for a necropsy.

“We hoped only to see Flaco hooting wildly from the top of our local water tower, never in the clinic,” the World Bird Fund wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Flaco's time in the sky began on Feb. 2, 2023, when someone breached a waist-high fence and slipped into the Central Park Zoo. Once inside, they cut a hole through a steel mesh cage, freeing the owl that had arrived at the zoo as a fledgling 13 years earlier.

Since the zoo suspended efforts to re-capture Flaco in February 2023, there has been no public information about the crime.

Until now, Flaco had defied the odds, thriving in the urban jungle despite a lifetime in captivity. He became one of the city’s most beloved characters. By day he lounged in Manhattan’s courtyards and parks or perches on fire escapes. He spent his nights hooting atop water towers and preying on the city’s abundant rats.

He was known for turning up unexpectedly at New Yorkers’ windows and was tracked around the Big Apple by bird watchers. His death prompted an outpouring of grief on social media Friday night.

One of Flaco’s most dedicated observers, David Barrett, suggested a temporary memorial at the bird's favorite oak tree in Central Park.

There, fellow birders could “lay flowers, leave a note, or just be with others who loved Flaco,” Barrett wrote in a post on X for the account Manhattan Bird Alert, which documented the bird’s whereabouts.

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'Dinosaur Highway' Tracks Dating Back 166 Million Years are Discovered in England

In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
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'Dinosaur Highway' Tracks Dating Back 166 Million Years are Discovered in England

In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)

A worker digging up clay in a southern England limestone quarry noticed unusual bumps that led to the discovery of a “dinosaur highway” and nearly 200 tracks that date back 166 million years, researchers said Thursday.

The extraordinary find made after a team of more than 100 people excavated the Dewars Farm Quarry, in Oxfordshire, in June expands upon previous paleontology work in the area and offers greater insights into the Middle Jurassic period, researchers at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham said.

“These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs, revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited,” said Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontology professor at the University of Birmingham, The AP reported.

Four of the sets of tracks that make up the so-called highway show paths taken by gigantic, long-necked, herbivores called sauropods, thought to be Cetiosaurus, a dinosaur that grew to nearly 60 feet (18 meters) in length. A fifth set belonged to the Megalosaurus, a ferocious 9-meter predator that left a distinctive triple-claw print and was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named two centuries ago.

An area where the tracks cross raises questions about possible interactions between the carnivores and herbivores.

“Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found," said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Nearly 30 years ago, 40 sets of footprints discovered in a limestone quarry in the area were considered one of the world's most scientifically important dinosaur track sites. But that area is mostly inaccessible now and there's limited photographic evidence because it predated the use of digital cameras and drones to record the findings.

The group that worked at the site this summer took more than 20,000 digital images and used drones to create 3-D models of the prints. The trove of documentation will aid future studies and could shed light on the size of the dinosaurs, how they walked and the speed at which they moved.

“The preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur’s feet squelched in and out," said Duncan Murdock, an earth scientist at the Oxford museum. "Along with other fossils like burrows, shells and plants we can bring to life the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through.”

The findings will be shown at a new exhibit at the museum and also broadcast on the BBC's “Digging for Britain” program next week.