Long-tailed Shrike

I'm sure that all birders with even a passing awareness of the national birding scene know about the presence of a Long-tailed Shrike on the Glos/Oxon border. However, for the full story of what has been an amazing unfolding of events, one has to go a bit further back to the 5th of July when one was found on some farmland up in Crail, Fife in Scotland. This was only the second ever for Britain and the first mainland bird. Cue a mass twitch for Serious Twitchers. As a less serious twitcher it had of course been too far and with no other trips on the horizon there was not even the opportunity to bend the definition of en route to well past breaking point. So I watched with passing interested as the great and the good of the twitching world went to pay homage. In the end it didn't stay very long, last being seen on the 8th July. That was that, I presumed.

However, that was not in fact that for on the 18th of July belated news surfaced of another Long-tailed Shrike which had been staying no distance at all away in Gloucestershire from the 8th to the 16th but "no sign since". Of course there was a certain amount of gnashing of teeth and "why weren't we told" from the birding community. Some ultra-keen locals decided to look for it anyway and after some heroic leg work from some on the morning after news broke, it was turned up back at it's original location. Cue a mass twitch for everyone who hadn't gone to Crail or who needed it for their Gloucestershire list. 

Now the Oxon birding community had soon cottoned on to the fact that the reported Shrike location was only a couple of hundred yards from the Oxon border so there might be added incentive to pay a visit. Not that I personally needed any extra incentives. Here was a 3rd only for Britain less than three quarters of an hour's drive from my front door - what's not to like? I say 3rd for Britain, as there was apparently an overlap in dates for the Crail bird and the Glos. bird so it wasn't the same bird relocating. Subsequent photo comparisons seem to confirm this as a different bird.

On my part, the only difficulty standing between me and a tick was that I had a client call booked for late morning just after the news of its continued presence broke. There was a certain amount of determined focusing on my client's needs and ignoring of any WhatsApp messages on my part as I purposefully blocked out any thoughts of twitching for the duration of the session. After the end as I caught up on early county reports it seems that the bird had been on show the whole time but had carefully stayed away from the Oxon border. 

So, with the afternoon to myself, after lunch I fired up the Gnome-mobile and headed off on the 40 minute drive past Burford and just over the border into Gloucestershire. I don't usually like doing first day twitches because of the crowds but this was too big a bird to miss so I parked up in a layby and walked past various twitchers' cars abandoned on the verges and hurried towards the twitch site. The steady stream of news from various channels had been positive all afternoon so I was pretty confident of connecting. I arrived to find literally hundreds of amassed twitchers all along the road all staring through their scopes and bins in the distance. It was quite a sight! 

Above and below, twitching mayhem, courtesy of Peter Law

 

I chose to stand by the start of the footpath where a marshal in a high-vis jacket helpfully pointed out the bird in the distance on top of a patch of brambles. So I immediately connected - tick!

"Is that over the border in Oxfordshire?", I enquired

"No, no. The border is that wall over there", came the marshal's reply.

Hmmm, it didn't seem that far from the wall and was obviously much closer that it had been this morning. There seemed to me to be a real chance that it might cross over at some point. 

You can just see the county boundary hedgerow in the distance, courtesy of Peter Law

So in the heat of the afternoon I diligently watched the heat-hazy blob that was the mega rare Long-tailed Shrike, perversely willing it to move further away from me. Eventually it hopped up into a bush that seemed to be to be across the border. 

"I'm having that!" I said to fellow Oxon birders GC and IE who were standing nearby. They concurred with this claim that it was indeed across the border. For a little while after that it flirted with the border, sitting in a hedge that straddled the two counties before finally perching on a post that was on the county boundary itself. 

"It seems to be on the back half of the post - so at least half in Oxon!"

Then it finally flew about ten yards further away and picked up something off the ground before returning to the post. There was now no doubt at all! Both a national lifer and an Oxon tick - get in!!! I put the news out on the county WhatsApp about the boundary crossing event. This rather set the cat amongst the pigeons as the Oxon twitchers who'd come and gone that morning would now have to come back for their Oxon tick. I then carried on admiring the Shrike through my bins and scope as best I could in the heat haze.

Above and below, some photos that were representative of my views, courtesy of Ewan Urquhart

 

By way of some background information, the Long-tailed Shrike is found across Asia from Kazakhstan to New Guinea where it mainly inhabits scrub and open land. Many of the temperate zone populations are migratory, moving south in winter while those in the tropics tend to be sedentary although they may make short distance movements. Prior to the Crail bird the only previous record was one on South Uist in November 2000 where a chartered boat famously broke down and the twitchers on board had to be rescued. So it was a proper rarity. 

In terms of which of the nine recognised subspecies it was, I can do no better than to quote a Bird Guides article:

"The thin black mask of the Fife bird, narrowing across the forehead, with a grey crown and nape transitioning into a rufous-brown back and mantle makes it a close match for a bird of the migratory erythronotus subspecies. This is the expected taxon in Europe, breeding across Central Asia before migrating to the Indian plains for the winter." 

It was clear that I wasn't going to get any better views and with the haze I didn't even attempt a photo of any kind. Instead I watched it as it actively hunted along the dry field edges, burnt brown by the on-going heatwave. It seemed to be finding plenty of prey, no doubt largely due to the organic stewardship of the fields by the conservation friendly farmer. With so many people around I kept bumping into fellow Oxonians so there was much of the usual banter and mutual back slapping that comes with a successful twitch. Eventually I decided that I'd had my fill and headed back to the car, very pleased with my double lifer/county tick though somewhat disappointed with the hazy views. I vowed to come back again once the crowds died down.

Courtesy of Ewan Urquhart

The bird duly stuck around, seemingly completely happy with its chosen patch and was on show pretty much constantly for the whole week. Gradually numbers dwindled so on the following Sunday, a week after I'd first seen it, I decided to pay a late afternoon visit where the heat haze would be less of an issue. Car parking had been arranged by the farmer who owned the fields, largely to keep cars off the verges during the harvest period when combine harvesters had to be moved around the different fields along the narrow country lanes. So I parked up in the field along with just ten other cars, paid my fiver to the attendant and ambled along the road back to the original footpath. The incessant heatwave had baked all the grass and flowers brown with just the more deeply rooted hawthorns and other shrubs able to stay green. So it was rather a strange, alien landscape to walk amongst. 

Farmland landscape on the way to the Shrike

At the twitch site instead of the huge masses there was just a small group of about a dozen or so people up past the county boundary post so I went over to join them. 

Much more modest crowds this afternoon

It was very breezy today and in the stiff wind the Shrike had decided to shelter on the leeward side of a large bramble bush. Fortunately this was on the Oxon side though this didn't matter so much now that I already had my county tick. What did matter was the bird was much closer, about 30 yards away and was pretty stationary so I was able to enjoy prolonged scope views and even to take some Superzoom record shots.

Above and below, my best efforts

 

Some rather wobbly, hand-held video footage of the bird 

 

I stayed with the bird for about an hour and a half as it periodically made a sortie to catch something to eat before returning to its sheltered perch. Finally, after having been stationary for a long period of time it suddenly flew up over the hedge and down into the scrub on the ground on the far side of the wall. We hurried over to that side but could not see it anywhere. Indeed despite hanging around for about 15 minutes there was still no sign of it so people started to drift away. Having had my fill, I too chose to head back to the car, with my walk back graced by a Weasel that ran across the road in front of me. Then it was back to the Gnome-mobile and the drive back home to Casa Gnome in a very contently frame of mind, having had wonderful second views of a fabulous county and national rarity. I wonder how long it might stick around for.