In early March 2024, mourners gathered in New York’s Central Park to pay tribute to Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl. The Central Park Zoo escapee—who, throughout his 12 months free within the park, captured most of the metropolis’s hearts, minds, and rats in his talons—was killed on February 23, 2024, seemingly by a high-rise window. Hundreds got here to his memorial service, and plenty of laid flowers, letters, drawings, and images underneath the oak that was his most popular tree. Some are actually searching for one thing extra everlasting. A petition calling on the City Council to install a statue of Flaco in the park has greater than 4,000 signatures from individuals who, within the phrases of organizers Brandon Borror-Chappell and Mike Hubbard, want “to commemorate his legacy—and to remind us all to keep a curious, respectful eye out for the myriad wonderful beings with whom we share this space.”
If this occurs, that statue will be a part of a particular lineage: the chicken memorial. While the world is aflutter with chicken artwork usually, the flock of memorials for individual, identified birds is small. Some of those honor home companions equivalent to Alec, a goose who appreciated to walk kids to highschool in Nineteen Twenties Belfast, and Roscoe, a feral rooster who ceaselessly crossed the highway in Takoma Park, Maryland. Others are stunning memorials for a whole extinct species, placed close to the place their endlings—the final members of a species, invested with symbolic weight earlier than and after loss of life—had been final seen.
But, so far as I’ve been capable of finding,* there is just one statue on the market that particularly commemorates a free-living chicken who ended up removed from the place he supposedly belonged. The sculpture, by bronze artist David Smus, portrays a juvenile nice black hawk who lived for a brief season in Portland, Maine. It’s a singular and poignant tribute to a chicken who, like Flaco, gave his life to be a part of a brand new neighborhood.
A Brief Visit
The great black hawk memorial is on the west finish of Portland’s Deering Oaks Park. It’s a 10-foot granite pillar holding up a shining bronze depiction of its topic: life-sized (nice black hawks have a wingspan of about 4 toes), head swiveled, and one wing stretched as if able to dive. Near the underside of the pillar is a wary-looking grey squirrel, additionally in bronze. The sculpture was made to honor the primary great black hawk ever seen within the United States. These birds of prey are frequent in South America and coastal Mexico, the place they name to one another with a particular whistle-screech and use their lengthy legs to chase down prey on the bottom. They usually don’t journey a lot.
But in April 2018, a juvenile male was noticed in Texas, farther north than ever seen earlier than. Birders got excited. In August of that 12 months, the identical nice black hawk, recognized by his plumage patterns, confirmed up means farther north, on the coast of Maine. He flew off once more, however returned in late October, and ultimately settled down in Deering Oaks Park.
Excitement grew. Many birds journey 1000’s of miles per 12 months as a part of their usually scheduled programming, and make anticipated visits. East Coast Americans depend on warblers coming by means of within the spring and fall, as an example. But every now and then, people from migratory and homebody species can go off track, pushed by wind or confusion or curiosity, and find yourself someplace model new. These birds, often known as vagrants, usually make an enormous impression amongst birders and within the wider communities that come to undertake them as their very own. (At least two different vagrants have been memorialized indirectly, if not with a full statue: a white-crowned sparrow who visited Norfolk, England, in 2002 was incorporated into a stained-glass window in a church there; and there may be a stone in Blidworth, England, commemorating an Egyptian nightjar who was shot by a hunter.)
Birders, after all, love when an uncommon species appears to have gone out of its option to go to—the reverse of the same old scenario. But almost everybody tends to understand them. Like Flaco and different wanderers or escapees, vagrants appear out of place—a designation complicated by our time of captive breeding, zoos, human-mediated dispersal, and climate-change-driven range shifts, however one that also holds symbolic energy and poses fascinating issues. Their tales land as heartwarming or goofy; inspiring or tragic.
Maine’s nice black hawk was all of those and extra. His presence was thrilling: Here (once more, like Flaco) was a large chicken of prey with a aptitude for drama, lording over a metropolis park. People came from across the nation to see him; some who lived close by got here almost each day.
Watching him was intriguing and rewarding: What was this streaky juvenile, whose species usually lives off lizards and crayfish, going to eat within the winter? (He solved that puzzle rapidly, and was hardly ever photographed and not using a bloodied squirrel.) “The fact that this incredible bird has survived so long so far away from its native range is simply astounding,” wrote naturalist Doug Hitchcock in Maine Audubon. “How many Great Black Hawks have ever seen snow?”
In the tip, the story was unhappy, too—the chicken’s chosen home couldn’t care for him. In late January, parkgoers discovered the good black hawk on the bottom, his lengthy legs frostbitten. A neighborhood rehab group, Avian Haven, made the troublesome resolution to euthanize him, and he died on January 31, 2019.
A Permanent Memory
David Smus, who lives about two hours from Portland, by no means acquired to see the good black hawk alive. But he has been sculpting herons, puffins, and different Maine birds for years, together with some residing at Avian Haven. After the good black hawk’s loss of life, he acquired a name from a volunteer there.
People actually missed their customer. Several organizations, together with Maine Audubon, Maine Fish and Wildlife, and the Friends of Deering Oaks, had been considering of working collectively to make a memorial for him—“a really nice depiction of what the bird really looked like, live in that park,” Smus recollects. They requested if he would put collectively a proposal.
Smus took measurements and images of the hawk’s physique, which was later taxidermied for the Maine State Museum. He famous the attributes of the unfamiliar species—the lanky legs, the featherless lores (the house between the attention and the beak)—and of the individual, whose distinctive streaked sample and bent tail feather had allowed him to be acknowledged simply on either side of the continent.
Commissions, particularly of public artwork, contain integrating totally different wants, Smus says. Asked to make the statue vandal-proof, he determined to place it on high of a granite column, the place individuals may “see it from a great distance, and be drawn to it between the trees,” he says. To guarantee visibility from the bottom, he stretched one of many hawk’s broad wings, “like it’s maneuvering through those trees.” He designed the tail with a wonky feather. And to point out how the hawk had survived (and to curiosity kids, who won’t be capable of see as much as the highest) he included a bronze squirrel.
Smus’s proposal was accepted. The completed sculpture, Extraordinary Journey, was unveiled in 2020, in a grove of spruce and catalpa bushes, “a favorite spot for the bird to roost” and a superb place for a picnic, Smus says. Nearby is an informational plaque that particulars the entire story in phrases.
Smus can also be an admirer of Flaco, and hopes {that a} everlasting memorial may take form. In the meantime, extra tributes to the owl are coming in, each summary (a recent ice skating show was devoted to him) and concrete (a gaggle of state senators and meeting members proposing a invoice that requires new buildings to include bird-friendly designs have renamed it “The FLACO Act”). It’s a bit humorous to think about chicken statues, which pay homage to a free-moving being by fixing it into place. But we’re caught on Earth, and that is a technique we will hold them with us.
* If of different examples of chicken memorial statues, please be happy to write down me at [email protected].
Cara Giaimo writes about plant and animal science and tradition throughout the Internet, and lives along with her spouse and two cats in Somerville, Massachusetts. Cara can also be co-author of Atlas Obscura’s upcoming e book, Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders. Pre-order your copy today!
