Wild Thing!
Good day at Spurn which included a full set of scarce winter beach passerines. More on those to come. For now THIS:
Eagle Owl. This mighty beast was found as fresh road kill near Hull exactly 2 weeks ago. (on the A63 near the Humber bridge). I don’t know if its wild or not – or even if it’s a European bird or not. It has no rings.
Speculate is somewhat inevitable though, while we wait for more information on the bird! Have a look at what else was occurring on the east coast- especially birds from a Scandinavian origin in mid October 2010 – notably 4 Rough-legged Buzzards at Spurn over the same weekend.
Perhaps this one will be found to have been an escaped falconer’s bird – or maybe not.
The status of the Eagle Owl in Britain is already a highly contentious issue, . Be interesting to see what this unexpected individual contributes to the debate (with thanks to Andy Gibson).
Chris Batty sent me an apposite email last night (friday) - will check some bios on the bird hopefully today and report results here later
Wild or not what a sad end to a magnificent bird. Will be interesting to see result of findings.
Is this a candidate for isotope analysis? Would that pick out the difference between a wild scandinavian bird and a wild (or non-wild) british bird?
Tai
you are right of course
a number of test I believe will be done on this bird including isotope analysis
thanks for getting in touch
Martin