The Book of Flaco: The World’s Most Famous Bird
BY DAVID GESSNER
PREORDER TODAY!
PHOTO BY RUBEN GIRON
A Book About Flaco the Owl Coming in February, 2025!
The Book of Flaco: The World’s Most Famous Bird
AS SEEN IN PEOPLE MAGAZINE
BY LIZZ SCHUMER JUNE 27, 2024
“Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl flew from his enclosure in Central Park Zoo and into the hearts of millions around the world. For the first time, he will now be forever memorialized in a new book.
The Book of Flaco: The World’s Most Famous Bird by nature writer David Gessner will come out Feb. 11, 2025, the first anniversary of the bird’s untimely death. Called a “fable of freedom and wildness,” the book will follow Flaco’s adventure from the February 2023 night when vandals cut a hole in his cage until his death a year later on the Upper West Side.“
View the full People.com article here.
AS SEEN IN KIRKUS REVIEWS
BY MICHAEL SCHAUB JULY 1, 2024
“America’s best-known owl is getting his own book.
North Carolina-based nonprofit press Blair will publish David Gessner’s The Book of Flaco: The World’s Most Famous Bird next year, People magazine reports. The press describes the book as “a fable of freedom and wildness.”
Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl, lived for 12 years in New York’s Central Park Zoo until early 2023, when vandals damaged his cage and he escaped. Zoo employees were unable to recapture him, and he spent the following year in the park and other locations in Manhattan.”
View the full KirkusReviews.com article here.
Read Flaco: A Triptych
by David Guessner
The Book of Flaco: The World’s Most Famous Bird grew out of Flaco: A Triptych, three articles written by Guessner for Terrain.org right after Flaco’s death. Though it is the last in the series, Part 3 of Flaco: A Triptych gives you the best sense of the wild beauty of the bird as it journeys through the urban wild.
To read Parts 1, 2, and 3 of The Triptych, click on the following links.
PHOTO BY Nan Knighton @nanknighton
PHOTO BY DAVID BARRETT
Imagine Flaco, the escaped Eurasian eagle-owl, flying through Central Park after dark…
From up above, Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl hooted down on New York City.
I have never really noticed water towers in New York before. After today I will see them everywhere. The great ancient-looking tubs, archaic-seeming, carbuncles from another century topping off modern buildings. Perfect owl perches.
David [Barrett], who lives on the Upper East Side close to the park, first heard about the owl when it landed on Fifth Avenue the night of its escape...
February 2, 2023, his X followers reporting it to him, “as early as 8:30 or 9:00.” A follower initially reported that the owl was a great horned but once he was sent a photo he quickly realized it was a Eurasian eagle-owl, a non-native bird, and that it probably came from the Central Park Zoo, only three blocks away. By early the next morning David, armed with his camera and binoculars, had made his way to the Hallett Sanctuary along the park’s southern border, and soon had the owl in his sights. By then the news was out, confirming that the owl’s name was Flaco and he had indeed escaped from the zoo.
PHOTO BY RUBEN GIRON
Praise for Gessner’s Writing
PHOTO BY DAVID BARRETT
About David Gessner
David Gessner is the author of thirteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including the New York Times bestselling, All the Wild That Remains, Return of the Osprey, Sick of Nature and Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness.
About the book
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 around the world. 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.
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