Abstract

Eagle Owls Bubo bubo have bred in northern England in most years since the mid 1990s, and this has prompted much debate about their place in the British avifauna.The paper reassesses the fossil and more recent archaeological records of Eagle Owl in Britain. Separating fossil remains of Eagle Owl from those of the closely related Snowy Owl B. scandiacus is extremely difficult, but records suggest that Eagle Owls, or a species of Bubo closely allied with modern Eagle Owl, have been present in Britain for up to 700,000 years, through to the end of the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago, and into the Holocene.