Great Grey Shrike at Deeping High Bank, Lincolnshire

A couple of distant, ropey images of the Great Grey Shrike that was found by Ian Gordon on the Deeping High Bank on Monday of this week. The bird was frequenting a scrubby field by the river itself and was seen on numerous occasions making forays on to the ground in an attempt to capture some poor unsuspecting beastie. A great addition to my local year list.

Holme Great Grey Shrike

This bird is distant for me when the sun shines and at all other times it is too dark and gloomy, hence the 'noise' in the above photograph. I will endeavour to get a better shot, until then you can see the bird in more glory at Roy's or Mike's respective blogs HERE and HERE. Enjoy.

Great Grey Shrike on a grey day

A wet, murky, miserable day and I found myself at Holme village in Cambridgeshire in order to see this Great Grey Shrike that seems to have taken up residence close to the railway line. This is one of two birds that are in very close proximity to each other, approximately a couple of miles separates the two birds, which has led to two Great Grey Shrikes being seen on the same day in the PBC area, a first (I think!). During my visit the bird was pretty active, catching beetles and at one point catching a shrew or a mouse, it was too distant to be able to tell! Hopefully, this bird will over winter, leading to better views in better weather!

Shrike still not playing ball

The Great Grey Shrike is still present at Thorney, just north of Peterborough, but it continues to be very distant and extremely wary of anything that is slightly bigger than it, including a Wood Pigeon that spooked it the other day whilst I was paying a visit. It is very enjoyable, though, watching this bird through my `scope and it has put on a few good hunting shows, catching bees, butterflies and on one occasion catching a small mammal, impaling it on a thorn and proceeding to pull it apart (not for the squeamish). The second photo (above) shows it diving to floor after some poor unsuspecting beastie, although it was unsuccessful on this occasion.

Will it ever come closer?

Great Grey Shrike

Another example of `extreme` digiscoping.

A very distant record shot of my first Great Grey Shrike in the PBC area (and a heavily cropped version from the original) and an extremely good bird for my 2012 PBC year list. This bird was seen and reported yesterday evening close to the village of Thorney , just north of Peterborough and was again present today.

Mike Weedon phoned me early this morning to let me know that the bird was still present and gave me directions and after a bit of fighting with traffic and some searching with Brian Stone I managed some distant, but passable views of this stunning bird. I am hoping to return in order to get some better shots, but I leave you with these pictures as a `taster`. I only hope you can tell what it is!