There has been an escaped Eagle Owl in the Pocklington area of Yorkshire for at leat 4 months now and maybe over a year. At best all I can say is that it is doing a good job keeping the local rat population down, but on a more worrying note there is a pair of Barn Owls in the vicinity which could be threatened.
As far as I am aware there have been no reports from anywhere in the country of Eagle Owls being seen coming in off the sea at any of our major seawatching points or observatories, so most if not all of the birds in the wild must originate from captive stock. Impressive as they are, this in itself is no reason to welcome them into our avifauna. It only takes one Eagle Owl in an area of myxymatosis, and consequently hungry, to take a few lambs, for the farming commumity to say - enough is enough, it's open season on all birds of prey. Let's not have this happen through misguided enthusiasm for a wonderful but alien species.