Return of the eagle owl casts a giant shadow
(Filed: 14/11/2005)
The world's biggest owl is secretly and successfully breeding in Britain after an absence of hundreds of years, conservationists disclosed yesterday.
The eagle owl is knee-high to a human, has a 6ft wingspan and weighs nearly 9lb. The first footage of a pair of wild eagle owls and their chicks in Britain will be shown on television on Wednesday.
Like it or not, eagle owls are here and more are bound to arrive
The programme uncovers the controversy raging over the bird's future here. For eight years a pair have been breeding on the Yorkshire Moors. Patient observation and ringing of their chicks confirms that 23 owls have been successfully reared and left the nest.
Some experts are delighted; others are wary. In areas where there are shortages of smaller mammals, they sometimes prey on larger ones, including other birds of prey.
Roy Dennis, a specialist in raptor conservation, is convinced that the secretive eagle owl was once a British bird hunted to extinction. He believes that it should be welcomed back as a necessary part of our ecosystem.
Eagle owls are known to escape from captivity but evidence is growing that the birds, including the Yorkshire pair, could be arriving on the wing from across the English Channel.
In Sweden, eagle owls are found not only in remote forests but also on farmland and in quarries where they nest on rock ledges. Where rabbits, rats and other small mammals are abundant, they thrive.
In Holland, like Britain, they have made a rapid appearance. There, rabbits have become almost extinct through disease and the owls have turned to larger prey, including buzzards.
In Switzerland, researchers radio-tagged eagle owls and found that they could travel for more than 220 miles, reaching France and Italy and flying at an average speed of 25mph. Across Europe, the owls are spreading west, up to the coast. Crossing the Channel would be a short hop.
Some conservation organisations see the owls as an alien species that could prey on existing rare wildlife.
But Fergus Beeley, of Spider Movies, the film's producer, said: "Like it or not, eagle owls are here and more are bound to arrive."
Natural World - Return of the Eagle Owl: BBC 2, Wednesday 16th November 8pm
