The rogue peacock who New Yorkers named Raul returned to the Bronx Zoo late Thursday morning after a raucous night on the town Wednesday.
After an overnight stay in a tree outside the zoo, the bird “flew back onto zoo grounds under his own initiative” shortly after 11 a.m. Thursday, a spokesperson for the Bronx Zoo confirmed.
“We kept an eye on the bird this morning as he started to move around at dawn and fully expected him to return to the zoo as he did," spokesperson Max Pulsinelli said.
Zoo officials did not say whether the bird that returned to the zoo was the same peacock wandering East 180th Street on Thursday night, but said zoo officials expected the peacock to return of its own volition.
A man identified in a video on the Citizen app as Mike showed footage from his phone of a peacock roaming the streets, with a timestamp around 7:30 p.m.
The man said he was trying to protect the bird from traffic when it bit his leg before flying into a tree.
"I thought I was buggin'," the man said in the video, saying witnesses tried to isolate the bird behind a gate to keep it safe.
“He got tied in the gate and I tried to pet and he grabbed my pants. Then the motherf*** flew in the tree!” he continued.
EMS workers were on the scene to treat an unnamed man for a minor injury for which he refused to be taken to the hospital, the fire department said.
The biting peacock was first reported by Gothamist.
Phil Corso and Catalina Gonella contributed reporting.
