GREAT Grey Shrike!!

[pheonix]

i had a very good couple of hours watching a great grey shrike, and trust me it is great! i had seen reports of one around the grendon underwood area, bucks, for a couple of weeks and as i had a day off tuesday decided to go and find it.

i had walked along every footpath around the top end of the village, seeing many birds but no shrike, now getting a bit downhearted and thinking of going home. my last effort was going to be on a footpath behind the church yard. plodding along thinking i wont go to far as its obviously not around anymore, then i look up to see a man stanging with a scope and a tripod with his camera and a huge lens on.
approaching the man, i asked if he had spotted the shrike and he had, and he reffered to it as showing well (a birders term?) but he had not seen it for a few minutes.
we searched the areas where he had seen it with binoculars and it soon appeared about a hundred and fifty metres away, just close enough to see quite well with binoculars. and it was 'showing well' with its habit to sit at the top of trees or on top of scrub, and i saw it clearly from every angle.
so there i was for two hours tranfixed on watching this bird. as i was talking to the gentleman he had told me that the bird has been there for well over two weeks, has a larder in an area of trees where we were watching it, and had pevoiusly seen it eat a mouse and spike a long-tailed tit! (which is why they are also known as butcher birds)
i was hoping to get some photos but my camera just wasnt up to the job, it did later come up to about 40 metres away so i managed to zoom in enough to just get the bird in sight, not brilliant pictures but pictures none the less (that i will try and show you).

so after the hours drive and trecking round for ages, the reward was well worth it

[Oy]

Great stuff!

Did you give the bloke the link to this site?

[pheonix]

here are some of the better pictures, i regret that they arnt brilliant form or quaility, but even if nobody elase can tell i know what they are of

[Tursiops]

Nice one. Another bird I've only seen once, a long time ago (at Gibraltar Point). You're having a good winter!
T

[John]

I love the Shrike family in general. They can be such posers. Well done on catching up with the bird.

Lesson learned, get yourself some digiscoping equipment. At 40 metres you would have had a photo in your face, so to speak.

[Polecat]

I do like watching Shrikes, and so long as you keep a fair distance they don't seemed to be bothered by your presence. A great grey has been hereabouts for the last four years. The year before last it spent a week or more perching on the fences and lecky wires out the back here, scooting down to the ground and then back up to the perch again. I could stand about 100' away , in the open, and just watch....and as you say, this can go on for hours!!!

in 2003 I watched a lesser grey shrike performing very similarly...though that bird didn't hang around.

As for the term 'showing well'......hmm, not my sort of language. The beauty is in the eye & heart, not on a tick sheet.