I was seabird ringing on Puffin Island when news broke on Sunday of a Long-tailed Shrike found at Crail in Fife. Coincidentally it was very near where Britain's first Masked Shrike was found in 2004! I didn't see the messages until late in the afternoon and it was too late to travel that day. This is only the 2nd record of Long-tailed Shrike in the UK following a bird that was found on S Uist in November 2000 and was only present for two days although it was rumoured to have been around and identified as a Red-backed Shrike for a few days prior to it s true identity being realised.
Monday morning came and I was making plans to got up to Crail Tuesday as there were other things I had to sort out Monday. The shrike was still there. With Jan going away to play golf in Northumberland for a few days I was doing a shop at a well known local supermarket when my plans changed and the events I had planned for Monday got shifted to Tuesday. A quick mental arithmetic and a check of Google maps and I was planning to go. Knowing some of my mates on the Hilbre ringing team were keen to go I contacted them and before Id got home we'd arranged to meet at mine around midday.
The journey should have been uneventful if not long but endless roadworks on the M6 along with accidents and idiots rubber necking conspired to slow us down and add almost an hour to our journey! We eventually arrived at the designated parking area around 18.00 and set off for the 15 minute walk to where the bird had been showing intermittently. What a fantastic area. Singing Corn Buntings and Yellowhammers serenaded us whilst Yellow Wagtails and Skylarks flew over calling. The shrike was actually found by someone doing Corn Bunting surveys and much credit is due to the finder and those who arranged parking and access.
There were a few people still hanging around and we soon realised this wasn't going to be any easy roll up, see the bird and leave. Although faithful to a relatively short length of hedge it would go missing for hours at a time before showing briefly again and then diving back into cover. It hadn't actually been seen for over an hour and a half and before that had gone missing for over two hours. We'd heard that some people had left site without seeing the bird.
Luckily we stood next to Andy Lawson where we thought we'd get the best chance of seeing the bird and after a stressful wait and continuous scanning of the hedge he calmly announced he'd got it perched up inside the hedge. With impeccable directions he got Steve & I on to it and, whilst using the scope with one hand I used the other to ring Al who was viewing from a different position. He soon came running followed by the others on site and everyone eventually got views. We were extremely lucky as it transpired that this was the longest it had shown all day. A few distant photos later, and with Steve managing a couple of short videos, it flew back down into the cover of a very deep ditch running alongside its favoured hedge.
Three happy Hilbre musketeers rocking their new Obs baseball caps. An expertly taken selfie by Steve.
It briefly perched up and showed really well in the open but before the majority of people could react it promptly flew down again. By now we were getting cold and aware that the journey home was going to be long and tiring so said our goodbyes to others we knew and headed back to the car pausing only to photograph the Isle of May and reflect at how near the bird must have come to settling there and how much more difficult it would have been to get to see it! Coincidentally my previous blog post was about twitching a Calandra Lark on the Isle of May.
