With best part of the day spent around Tanholt GP, River Nene at the Millennium Bridge area and Dog-in-a-Doublet in search of migrants (and finding bugger all!), we were heading home across an also migrant free Blackbush when a text from Brian Stone was welcome news. Great Grey Shrike along Thorney Dyke Road. We about turned and eventually got through to Bri who told us roughly where it was, although some of the details were missed due to a dodgy mobile signal. So having checked around both 'Knarr Fen' road junctions I decided to ring the finder, Charlie Kitchen, for more details. He told me the bird was sitting in the middle of a ploughed field! What! Yes, sitting in the field and catching flying insects. So we followed his instructions and on pulling up at the rough area I spied a tell-tale black, grey and white shape disappear in to a tree by the ploughed field it was last seen in. Out of the car we soon had the shrike in the scope. Crackin! And true to Charlie's word, after a brief couple of minutes in the trees, it flew back in to the middle of the ploughed field where it was more than happy to catch anything that winged its way past it.
Although never close, it is a very clean bird with black, not brownish tinged mask and wings, and not hint of any barring, so I age this as an adult winter bird.
We watched it in the field for best part of an hour, got these very distant record shots in the gloomy light before rain threatened and we left the shrike to it.
A great grey day rather than a dull out day as it was threatening to be!
Images | Leica APO Televid 62 with 26xWA | Nikon Coolpix 995 |
© Steve Dudley
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