Second helpings of the beautiful Eastleach Turville Long Tailed Shrike

I went back to the beautiful Long Tailed Shrike yesterday morning and I’m so very glad I did. The first summer male has now pretty much finished its moult and is looking absolutely stunning in the lovely morning light. With its fresh set of feathers I’m guessing that it will be heading south very soon.

A reminder that this is only the third UK record of this Asian vagrant, the second being the one I saw in Fife at the start of July.

It’s been present for over a month now but is still attracting reasonable numbers of visitors with perhaps 20 people there. I’ve heard of one birder who has been to see it eighteen times!

I won’t repeat the background information again on this beauty in this blog but will refer you to my previous two blogs here and here.

In between showings we were treated to an entertaining Weasel running across the path several times, once with a vole that it had caught. It’s easy to forget how tiny these furious aggressive predators are.

The countryside around the Shrike seems to be well managed for wildlife with Whinchat, Grey Partridge, Corn Bunting, Redstart, Whitethroat and Stonechat also present in some numbers. At one point we watched a Sparrow Hawk swoop by and grab an unfortunate unidentified victim from the local flock

On the way home I stopped off at Ripple gravel pits to see an attractive juvenile Little Stint that local patch worker Andy Warr had found. Andy was on site and very helpfully showed me where the bird was.

Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!

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