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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PaulD" data-source="post: 1711134" data-attributes="member: 11840">Hi TerryThe evidence is in the British Birds paper (Vol.101 478-490). There are 13 pages so you can hardly expect me to reduce it to a few pithy sentences here. But (again) when you look at the available evidence the only tenable conclusion is that our population is down to escapes, illegal releases and their offspring and the role played by wild birds is either zero or so small that it is effectively zero.Note that I quite deliberately said that the role of wild birds could “effectively” be zero. Of course it is possible that a wild EO could reach Britain, but the available information on their movements clearly indicates that any such occurrences would be extremely rare (and it is possible that there haven’t been any).In post #72 I quoted how over 3000 Swedish ringing results have failed to produce a single recovery in Denmark. Does that prove that a Swedish EO has never reached Denmark? Of course it doesn’t, but it does indicate that even a narrow sea crossing is a barrier to EOs. If a sea crossing which is a mere 4km at it’s narrowest is a barrier, then it seems reasonable to think that the Channel and the North Sea will be more of an obstacle to EOs.There’s nothing new about this. Gatke’s observations from over 50 years on Heligoland in the 1800s aren’t mentioned in the BB paper, but he records numerous LE and SE Owls, Tengmalm’s Owls in double figures, 2 Snowy Owls and Hawk Owl, but no EOs. A noted migration watchpoint just off the German coast might seem an ideal spot for a wandering EO, but Gatke failed to record any. If you have new or overlooked information which shows that wild EOs reach Britain then please detail it or provide a link to it. I don’t have an axe to grind and I’ll happily consider fresh evidence. So I’ll again ask the question which you avoided answering – what actual evidence of wild EOs in Britain do you have?</blockquote>

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