I've seen anecdotal reports, but they always turned out to be mis-identified. I don't think they have ever been confirmed. AThat report was a bit disengenious as they were not living wild but just free ranging on the farm park
I've seen muntjac not too far from the Scottish border, up near Kielder, so it isn't out of the question.
No, and I'm sure they will turn up eventually. I did a bit of googling and found one hunting forum where someone claimed to have found a dead one by the road up near Grantown
Saw yesterday an exotic species ( in the Netherlands ) which was also for a short time exotic in the UK, the Muskrat. From 1930 to 1937 there should have been also an UK population but this went extinct. In the Netherlands however it is still found and because it is a real threat because of its digging in our dikes special rat-catchers are trying to keep the population as low as possible. They seem to do quite a good job because it was already years ago that I saw one but yesterday was sitting near a pond looking at me ( and I was looking back ). Had however no camera with me .
Exotic Species.... I didn't know there were still Muskrats in Europe. Do you still have Coypu in Netherlands? Feral Coypu have been Gove from UK since the 1980s.
Officially, anyway...... there is reason to believe they may still be clinging on in my neck of the woods, sad to say.
Also in the Netherlands still some Coypus are living, most in the southmost part ( Limburg ). After serve winters the population shrikes, when winters are milder the populations grows again. I don't know much about Coypus in other European countries ( an other ZooChatter who does ???? ).
Even the Wilds of Northumberland are not very wild, so I am surprised that the presence of animals as conspicuous as coypu is unclear. The ones I saw in the 70's made no effort to hide, although admittedly that was at Minsmere (a flagship RSPB reserve). Alan
I am pretty sure I've discussed the matter on here in the past, though I cannot find where; however in my search I did find this interesting thread on the matter of invasive coypu in which I also alluded to the issue: http://www.zoochat.com/65/nutria-elimination-case-study-fighting-invasive-278797/ In short, there have been occasional reports and rumours of possible coypu being seen in County Durham and Northumberland since the early 2000's - particularly in the River Derwent, the River Wear and (occasionally) the River Tyne downstream from Blaydon. The matter only became more widely known when a man in Consett killed what appears to have been either a very large rat or a coypu, and a poor quality photograph of the deceased animal made it into the national media: Investigation after "large rat" is killed (From The Northern Echo) Unfortunately the poor image quality, the distortion caused by camera perspective and the fact the corpse was destroyed prior to the story becoming widely known means the exact identity of the animal was never proven; although it does look a bit more like a brown rat than a coypu, I believe the local wildlife organisations are treating it as a possible coypu nonetheless due to the pre-existing rumours and reports.
One of my friends thought he spotted a skua near the local primary school, it turned out to be a kite.
A skua in Scotland? In America there aren't many exotic species, except sparrows and starlings running free.
Skua aren't actually an exotic species for the British Isles - a number of species are common visitors to the UK, and one or two actually breed in northern Scotland. There are actually a LOT of exotic species living in the USA; just off the top of my head the list includes the following: Africanized Honeybee (Apis mellifera scutellata) Brown Tree Snake (Boiga irregularis) Burmese Python (Python bivittatus) Nile monitor (Varanus niloticus) African Clawed Frog (Xenopus laevis) Sika deer (Cervus nippon) Wild boar (Sus scrofa)
It would still not be out of the ordinary to potentially see a skua - I live rather further south than you, in northeast England, but I've seen two skua species already this year. Last year I saw three
I wouldn't want to get off topic but there are a lot of introduced species to America. Here is the Wikipedia list for the USA and Canada: List of introduced species - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia And I can even think of species that aren't on that list!
