Manhattan's Hottest Birds

People watching is always a reliable diversion in the isle of Manhattan. However, to focus exclusively on the colourfully clad humans of the city is to ignore the rest of the fascinating animals that thrive in between and among us. While there are many illustrious creatures roaming the city streets and parks, today I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the avifauna of the big apple, and, in particular, the Hottest among them. This list is not meant to be exclusive rather representative, after all, this newsletter believes that all birds are Hot. Yes, even the pigeons. Even the pigeons.

Central Park’s “Hot Duck”

On a sharp winter afternoon in 2018, I was wandering around the southern end of Central Park, when I spotted a crowd gathered around a pond. There were dozens of people clamoring about, some of them even carrying long, telescopic camera lenses. Upon seeing the crowd, the friend with whom I was walking snarled, “ugh, I guess it’s a celebrity.” I hadn’t yet spotted any celebrities in my two or three years in New York City, so, chismosa as I am, I approached the group and peered through them, trying to identify the recipient of their attentions. I didn’t understand why their gaze was trained on the water. After a few minutes, I decided to ask. It wasn’t a human they were after, I learned, rather a rare Mandarin Duck who had recently taken residence in the Central Park ponds. Professional and amateur bird-watchers alike were mesmerized by this stud, and a small online community began to follow his every move. Soon, word escaped and the Hot Duck was profiled by magazines and newspapers, ballooning his fame. Where The Hot Duck came from and where he was going was anyone’s guess—it was suspected that he was a pet who escaped his owner’s grasp.

The Great Blue Heron

Herons can be spotted year-round in New York state, but they become more commonplace in the city as they either make their journeys south in the fall, or back north in the spring. This Great Blue Heron was spotted in Central Park in 2019, a few months after the Hot Duck craze that sensitized New Yorkers to the fact that there are non-pigeon birds living in the park. The Cut promptly reported on this “new hot bird”, hoping to spark controversy among the Hot Duck fans and perhaps fuel a battle for a single “hot bird” title, but fortunately, both the human and feathered-species recognized that there was more than enough Hotness to go around. We didn’t need to pit these beautiful creatures against each other. Though his stardom was never as notable as the Duck’s, the Heron minded his own business, fishing in different bodies of water across the Park. He enjoyed many traditional New York delicacies, including, most notably, a rat.

Geraldine the Horned Owl

Sweet Geraldine! There are a variety of owl species taking residence in Central Park, including a Snowy Owl (hi hedwig), all of whom have delighted birdwatchers in recent years. However, Geraldine, a female great horned owl who has been living in Central Park since January 2022, has a special place in my heart. One of her talons has been injured, and she enjoys looking over her dominion—the Central Park ramble—on cloudy days. Perhaps we like each other because her favourite pine tree in the park is on Cedar Hill, which also happens to be one of my favourite reading spots during the summer. At the height of his power, those new to the bird aventures in New York City wondered whether there might be something going on between our kind king Flaco and Geraldine. He was seen flying in her territories around Valentine’s Day. Those more seasoned among us know that not everything needs to be a rom-com and we can love both Flaco and Geraldine independently, even without forcing the influence of cupid’s bow.

Rover the Bald Eagle (RIP)

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know very much about Rover the Eagle until this past week, when he was found dead, tragically, after being run-over by a vehicle. Apparently Rover got his name because one of his legs carried a tag labelled “R7”. Though there was a moment when Bald Eagles were an endangered species in North America, they’re now much more common thanks to repopulation programs. That one called New York City it’s home and foraged for food alongside the fishermen on the Hudson River has been a herald of the birds’ growing population. Rover was a handsome bird, and it’s not his fault that his kind has been unwillingly appropriated for silly nationalistic purposes. Rest in Peace big bird.

Flaco the Eurasian Owl (RIP)

Oh friends, it is with a sad heart that I write to say that the City’s forever Hottest Bird, Flaco the Eurasian Owl, passed away on Friday, February 23rd. If you haven’t heard of Flaco, you live under a rock (or haven’t spent time with me for over a year). Flaco became a local celebrity when, a year ago, he escaped from Central Park Zoo and defied all odds with each day that he survived in the wild. When he first escaped, local authorities tried to re-capture him, luring him into a cage with the recorded cry of a female Eurasian Owl, but our Flaco was too smart for them. He spent his first months of freedom around the same areas of Central Park, and slowly but surely expanded his terrain. Before he passed, he had become a respected resident of the Upper West Side, where he’d often peer into people’s apartments perched on their AC units. The furthest he ventured was to the East Village, where he spent a weekend in November of last year to see what all the fuss was about. He agreed that the village was overrated, stinky, expensive, and loud, and made his way back uptown shortly thereafter.

Flaco represented many things to many people—he was a symbol of resilience and perseverance, freedom defying odds, or a touch of magic in a cold urban capitalistic hellscape. To me, he was goofy, handsome, and a reminder that human beings can care and love for the most unlikely creatures. Over the last year, I’ve been following Flaco’s story and his growing fan base on Twitter. I’ve been touched by the way that the city embraced this winged raptor, reporting on his whereabouts each day. I’ve enjoyed witnessing the delight reported by human eyes who met his dark, pebble eyes through a window. We’re not just automated robots clocking in, processing invoices or making weird shapes on powerpoint—we are alive and weird and feathered and we love one another. In some ways, seeing him perched atop water towers was a rallying cry against the jagged, artificial separation between “human” and “nature”. We’re all human, we’re all nature.

Rest easy big man. You were our real rat czar. You were our true king.

To close, and in the spirit of eulogies, my own (human) grandfather passed away on Thursday. It was a long awaited departure from this earth; he lived to the remorseless age of 94 and spent the last decade under the tyranny of dementia. This morning, after I learned about Flaco’s passing, I paused at a picture I took of my grandfather five or six years ago (maybe more!) at “the Devil’s punchbowl”, a beautiful national park in Surrey, reconstructed over the now defunct A3 highway. I don’t remember much of my grandfather before the disease—the heart attack that triggered the illness happened when I was fifteen or sixteen, and we always lived in different countries. But even though I didn’t “really know him”, this picture suggests to me that we knew one other in the way that family members know each other beyond interaction, beyond exchange. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that he sat on this bench surrounded by owls for long enough that I decided to take a picture of him, or that I stumbled into this picture after he and Flaco followed each other out of this life. But maybe it isn’t. Rest in peace, grandpa.