I don't think we in UK can compete with N America in terms of variety Jack, but we do pretty well for our size, perhaps because of our diversity of habitat. Our peregrines were in a precarious state some years ago but with a ban on some of the worst pesticides (which were ingested by smaller birds and then further ingested by the peregrines which preyed on them) the UK population is now healthy again. Unfortunately our sparrowhawks benefited in the same way, to the cost of the huge numbers of songbirds which they kill annually - the former should be the subject of serious culling by the keepers which the RSPB should be employing if they really cared for balanced bird populations.
We have far larger numbers of deer than most town-dwellers imagine and the fox population is flourishing following the emotive-driven ban on hunting (foxes are now controlled by poisoning and shooting, which together cause far more painful and lingering deaths than the brutal, but rapid, deaths that hunting ever did). But the ignorant human urban population here seems satisfied that the ban is a good thing, since they don't fully understand the realities of the countryside (I've nevertheless heard rumours that in certain of our cities young men are using their dogs - bull terriers/rotties? - to conduct their own form of hunting with urban foxes the prey).
Anyway, again great photos. I much look forward to seeing one of our own sea eagles in the Hebrides this coming summer. They too are mainly fish eaters but they won't pass up a hare or a sickly lamb if it offers. As a further aside, I once knew a man who took a young golden eagle from its nest (eyrie) in Benbecula many years ago (highly illegal now). He reared it and later sold it to James Robertson Justice, a large, ebullient British film actor of 50 years ago.
Tony.
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