Flaco the Famous New York City Owl Has Become a Peeping Tom

Wall Street Journal ^ | Dec. 18, 2023 9:58 am ET | By Joseph Pisani

[Red Badger]

NEW YORK—One recent morning, Reilly Richardson woke up to being watched. She jumped out of bed, went to the window of her Manhattan apartment and fell to the floor when she saw the peeper.

“It absolutely scared the you-know-what out of me,” she recalls about the 2-foot-tall owl staring back at her. “It’s New York City. It’s the last thing you expect to see.”

Richardson, 31, and an actor, didn’t know it then, but her feathered visitor was Flaco, an orange-eyed Eurasian eagle-owl who became a New York celebrity after he escaped a zoo in February and turned leafy Central Park into his home. He’s drawn binocular-toting crowds who couldn’t help but root for a creature, like them, trying to make it in the big city.

Over time, though, Flaco’s behavior has shifted. He’s become a true nosy New Yorker, a bit of a hoot and a real owl about town.

Flaco is a gawker, flying out of Central Park and around Manhattan, sometimes standing outside windows with his beak to the glass, and his large round eyes peering inside.

“I audibly gasped,” says Matt Sweeney, a digital marketer who was at his desk at home in the Upper West Side of Manhattan recently when Flaco graced his third-floor window

VIDEO AT LINK...................

[shadowlands1960]

Probably living off of pigeons... good hunting there..

[Jamestown1630]

He’s adorable.

He probably expects humans to give him food.

[dfwgator]

I thought he was playing for the Browns.

[Red Badger]

He ran out of rats in NYC?..................

[z3n]

I'm on your air conditioner, warming my feets

[Red Badger]

I knew that was coming!.................He did pretty good yesterday!..................

[Jamestown1630]

He’s a zoo escape. He’s probably known all his life that human beings = Food.

[1Old Pro]

“I audibly gasped,” says Matt Sweeney, a digital marketer who was at his desk at home in the Upper West Side of Manhattan recently when Flaco graced his third-floor window

Hopefully your boyfriend calmed you down.

[Red Badger]

[teeman8r]

i’m just here for the hooter pics

[lee martell]

That looks like a (my favorite?) Martian.
“Take me to your leader!”

[justme4now]

[Cowgirl]

Of course NY turns the story into perversion.

[Jamestown1630]

What IS that?

[Ezekiel]

Over time, though, Flaco’s behavior has shifted. He’s become a true nosy New Yorker, a bit of a hoot and a real owl about town.

Yeah but accordion to sources, jimenez to stay out of trouble.

[Albion Wilde]

Here is Peeping Flaco:

[Red Badger]

My cat does the same thing..................

[Jamestown1630]

His expression seems to be saying: ‘What has been seen cannot be unseen!’

[justme4now]

I haven’t a clue!🤣
I am fanatical when it comes to saving wild pictures.

I haven’t figured out if it is an AI generated picture or real!?🥴

There Are Real birds and other animals that have colors like this.

Whether this bird is real or not .. one thing for sure, it’s had way to much coffee!😁