This is a parable of freedom, wildness, and our urban ecosystems. Flaco has been dubbed “the world’s most famous bird.” From the night in February of 2023 when vandals cut a hole in his cage until his death a year later in a courtyard on the Upper West Side, his is a story full of adventure and unexpected turns.

Nature writer David Gessner chronicles the year-long odyssey of Flaco and the human drama that followed the owl who captured the imaginations of New Yorkers and people worldwide. Though he’d spent his life in a cage, Flaco learned to survive in New York City by eating rats, squirrels, and birds. He was an immigrant coming from elsewhere to make it in the big city. Central Park, the island of green in an urban sea, was his new home territory.

Flaco’s urban adventure brought controversy, pitting those who felt he should be returned to the zoo’s safety against those who created the “Free Flaco” movement. The birding world was fractured over the ethics of the online sharing of his location that brought hordes of observers to view him each day. And his end—with a grim necropsy revealing Flaco had suffered a viral infection from eating pigeons and had multiple rodenticides in his system—serves as a Rachel Carson-esque warning about the harm we’ve done to our urban environments, inspiring the passage of long-sought legislation protecting urban birds and regulations meant to reduce the use of rodenticides in New York City.