WATCH ABOVE: The missing bird has been a PR dream for fundraisers of the High Park Zoo. Peter Kim reports
After five days roaming Roncesvalles and surrounding areas the male peacock returned overnight to familiar surroundings: High Park Zoo.
“We’ve never had, in the almost 30 years I’ve been with the city, an escape like this,” said Richard Ubbens, director of parks for Toronto. “For the first little while we’ll keep him in the aviary area to make sure he stays there.”
Typically the five male peacocks at the zoo are given free reign of the grounds. That won’t change.
“It’s important for the birds to be able to fly up into the trees in the evening and do what they do naturally. They want to spend time up above; that’s what they do in nature,” he said.
“Often the peacocks will go out of their pens and sit in the trees around the zoo. That’s normal, we’re used to that. We’re just not so used to them taking off, leaving my ward, crossing Roncesvalles and going to other neighbourhoods,” said Sarah Doucette, city councillor for the area, who added that peacocks are generally friendly and often timid.
“Normally they don’t fly this far.”
The peacock became a Twitter parody shortly after flying off last Friday and was spotted by numerous residents hopping from home to home and flying short distances.
The bird has been a PR dream for High Park Zoo, which receives no city funding for capital expenses.
“Exposure for the zoo has been brilliant. As you know every year we try to raise money for our capital expenditures. The Friends of High Park Zoo have been joking saying that the peacock has been going out there to advertise: ‘come and donate to the zoo and help us with our matching funds,'” said Doucette.
Though no permanent changes are planned in light of the escape, this could change if it happens again.
“Right now, we’d like to leave it so that the wings are not clipped,” said Ubbens.
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