Eagle owls have been seen here

It does seem that these huge birds enjoy human company when in our county. There was the one which lived in a tree next to the Chichester cathedral. Another lived next to The Star pub at Alfriston in East Sussex in 2005.

This winter a bird roosted in trees surrounding Goodwood golf club. How many more might there be? Now is the time to find out because the male can be heard in spring a mile away. "Oooohu...ooohu...ooohu" he calls time and again.

The official German name for this giant among birds is not surprisingly uhu. Scientists call the bird Bubo bubo bubo to give the full taxonomic title.

The call is given at dusk from near the nesting site. Now that the bird has a breeding niche in the UK in Yorkshire and Scotland it is not improbable that it could nest in southern England, in Sussex. It prefers to nest on a cliff or quarry near a river and among scattered trees. I can think of several such sites in the county so lock up your cats. Actually the diet of the eagle owl is very varied.

Continental birders have noted the following among the prey items: kids of roe deer, hares, rabbits, hamsters, rats, moles, mice, capercailzie, black game, pheasants, partridges, jays, rooks, crows, magpies, snakes, lizards and frogs. Ducks, coots and moorhens have often been taken.

The hunting territory can be huge, covering six square miles but for a bird with a wingspan of five feet and a length of over two feet that is easily covered.

Normally it is purely nocturnal but if tamed as many are that have taken to the wild in the south, it can still fly in daylight. The bird has acquired a formidable reputation on the continent over hundreds if not thousands of years as "The Wild Huntsman".

People in mountainous countries across the old world from Spain to the Pacific have frightened themselves silly hearing the noises the bird can make at the breeding season which include grisly guffaws, rattlings and gratings like chains pulled over coffins, and terrible moaning suggesting a person dying in agony.

If confronted the owl puffs itself to twice its size and hisses like a snake. There are several stories of people knocked out of trees by the huge bird hitting them as they tried to rob nests of young for sale to collectors. However, tales of babies being snatched from prams seem to be uncoroborated...so far, that is.