My last blog, see here, told the story and background of my twitch to Scotland to see Britain’s second Long-Tailed Shrike, a record 26 years in the making since the first and only previous record on the Outer Hebrides in the year 2000.
What this hobby is absolutely guaranteed to do is surprise you!
A couple of weeks ago rumours started to circulate of a supressed record of potentially another bird in farmland on the Gloucester/Oxfordshire border. News only leaked out after it was thought to have gone. Not to be that easily deterred, Gloucester birder Mike King put in a sterling effort to refind it and his efforts were duly rewarded when it flew over his head on a Cotswold lane near the small village of Eastleach Turnville on Sunday.
Remarkably, based on near overlapping record dates and plumage and moult details, this does indeed appear to be a different bird to the Scottish one. Why, after a 26 year wait, we should suddenly be blessed with two records of this Asian vagrant some 7000 kms from its nearest normal residence is anyone’s guess.
I won’t repeat the background info on this mega rare bird in this blog as I went into considerable detail on this in my last post, see here.
This was certainly going to initiate a massive twitch and since I had just seen and had good views of the Scottish bird I decided to wait a couple of days until things had calmed down a little.
The very helpful friendly local farmer had opened up a field a short distance from the bird for parking. The adjacent road was very narrow and with the harvest in full swing it was very important that birders avoided parking on the road. Initially a couple of idiots did just that but by and large everyone was well behaved and donated to the farmers chosen charity in return for his kindness.
My visit aim was to try and get better photos of the Shrike. At this time of year heat haze when using long focal length lenses can be a real killer. In my experience at least, no amount of clever post processing can remove it from an affected image. With this in mind I arrived on site early on Tuesday morning. The short walk from the car park took me up a bridal way where perhaps 40 birders were viewing the Shrike perched up in and hunting from a small bush. Great scope views again but not the closer views for photography I was hoping for.
The shrike slowly and enticingly made its way down the fence line while continuously looping down to the ground to take an insect. Its main prey seemed to be some kind of grasshopper or cricket. Various small passerines were also flitting about in the hedges, Linnets, Whitethroats etc., seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Shrike was quite capable of taking them as prey. I have a vivid memory of a Shrike doing exactly this while I was watching it at Otmoor a good few years back.
As the clock ticked onto to 8 and with heat haze becoming more and more noticeable, the Shrike finally perched up photogenically on a nearby wild parsnip plant and hunted from it for a few moments before departing more distantly along the hedge line.
I pondered how on earth this Blackbird sized bird had managed to wander some 7000 km from its normal range and what on earth were the odds of two birds doing this in the same summer?
Come 9’o clock with the Shrike hunting much more distantly and the heat haze becoming very noticeable, I departed pleased that the Shrike had been so obliging for its assembled admirers.
Once again many thanks to the local farmer for enabling so many of us to see this wonderful bird on his land at one of the busiest times of year for him.
Post the visit I was chatting to my good birding pal Nick, link, who wondered how many birders had been lucky enough to see both Shrikes this summer - quite a few I suspect? He also wondered whether there was anyone who had seen all 3 including the bird 26 years ago. I certainly know that some of the near drowning survivors of that eventful twitch, see here for details, had finally laid that ghost to rest by seeing one of this summer’s birds.
Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!
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