The Great Grey Shrike and the Red-backed Shrike are two Shrikes I would expect to see every year in the UK. The Great Grey Shrike is a non-breeding scarce winter vagrant to the UK with a small number overwintering here most years. There’s been a quite showy one in the farmland hedges just outside of the small village of Fillingham in Lincolnshire for a while. So with a sunny day at last forecast for this Tuesday I was on site joining a small number of other birders just after 10 am. The sun was shining as forecast but there was a bitterly cold wind blowing and initially the Shrike was keeping to the leeward side of the hedge.
This particular chap has taken to hovering over a weedy field hawking voles. I have never seen this behaviour before and so this was something I very much wanted to see. After an hour or so of mainly preening and sheltering from the artic wind the shrike flew over the hedge into the foresaid field and started performing its acrobatics very much to the delight of everyone present.
The beguiling nature of this passerine hides its highly predatory nature. I have seen them take birds as large as Blackbirds in the past. To me its Latin name, Lanius excubitor suits it well. This scientific name literally means "sentinel butcher": Laniusis the Latin term for a butcher, while excubitor is Latin for a watchman or sentinel. Its colloquial name of butcher bird describes its habit of storing excess food by impaling prey to be consumed later in a larder usually in a thorn bush. During the 3 or so hours I was there the Shrike caught and stashed at least 3 voles, it had clearly found a very productive spot to see out the winter.
The adult is a medium-sized passerine similar in size to our Song Thrush. The general colour of the upperparts is an attractive pearl grey. The cheeks and chin as well as a thin and often hard-to-see stripe above the eye are white, and a deep black mask extends from the beak through the eye to the ear coverts; the area immediately above the beak is grey.
I watched the Shrike masterfully hover and catch voles until lunch time when, with a full memory card of photos to sort through, I decided to move onto the RSPB reserve at Frampton Marshes for the afternoon. An invigorating cold walk in the reserve and along the sea bank gave good views of the usual overwintering suspects. Perhaps the highlight of the afternoon was seeing the large flock, said to number in the region of two hundred, of overwintering Russian White-fronted Geese. We tend to get small numbers of these birds in the winter at various sites around the country, for example, Slimbridge, but this winter we have had exceptional numbers in the UK. I’m not sure why but they are very welcome.
The journey home took a very sad and unexpected twist when a major accident happened just ahead of me on the A46. A lorry came through the central reservation and hit a number of cars on my side resulting in one fatality and a number of serious injuries. Life often feels like a lottery ….If I had left a few minutes earlier, there but for the grace of god …
We were trapped for some two and a half hours but I must say the police did an excellent job of getting us off the blocked dual carriageway and on our way. We had to slowly drive the wrong way back down the dual carriageway with hazards on following a police escort.
A truly sobering way to end an enjoyable day out.
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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