Last week, my wife and I saw Wild Inside, a documentary about a Eurasian Eagle-Owl named Flaco that escaped the Central Park zoo and took up residence in Central Park and around Manhattan. It’s a great story about how the community was inspired by him and asks some profound questions about animal captivity versus our duty of care. Should wild animals be caged in zoos? What if they’ve only known captivity? Are we releasing them into an environment they aren’t prepared for?
I’m fascinated by documentaries like this one, that seem to have such a wealth of footage right from the beginning of the story. This all happened fairly recently, February 2023 is when Flaco escaped, but it speaks to the ubiquity of cameras in our modern environment. A large part of the documentary follows around a group of birders that keep tabs on Flaco’s location. Several of them are photographers and there are some nice close-up photos throughout the film.