Another Mega! - 19.7.26

Long-tailed Shrike

Back in November 2000 the UK’s first ever Long-tailed Shrike was found on South Uist. It was only twitchable for 2 days but had apparently been there for a few days before. Fast forward to 5th July this year and news broke of the second ever record being found near Crail in Fife. The 1st summer male bird was moulting and so it was thought that’d it’d do what the Bempton Turkestan Shrike did and stick about for a few weeks until it’d completed its moult but after just 4 days it vanished.

This left a lot of birders frustrated but for me it did save me 16+ hours in a car in a heatwave with rubbish aircon!

Long-tailed Shrike

Fast forward again to 18th July and news broke of a Long-tailed Shrike on the Glos/Oxon border. Sadly the news was also of it as being seen from 8-16th July but had been suppressed due to concerns about traffic chaos in the narrow countryside lanes. Amazingly this 1st summer male bird was a different bird to the Fife one going on plumage differences so it becomes the UK’s third record! But we’d not be able to see the bird as it’d too vanished.

Or so we thought as mid morning of Sunday 19th July Glos birder Mike King who had spent a fruitless 4 hours trying re-find it was walking back to his car when the bird flew past his shoulder and perched up nicely for him!

I was in the middle of packing for moving house when the mega alert went off but packing would have to wait. There was no time to wait and so I grabbed my gear and was out the door. I arranged to get Matt Moreton and for once the bird was only 1 hour 40 minutes away so a bit less driving than going for the Scottish one. The journey down was good apart from me missing a turn and having to do a few extra miles but we eventually reached Eastleach Martin but we couldn’t get to the now designated parking area as the lane was blocked by cars due to the bird being in roadside bushes so we parked up carefully nearby and walked down to the bird. 

I lagged behind Matt as usual but he let me have a look at the bird through his scope to get my eye in. Once in my scope I could enjoy it and add LONG-TAILED SHRIKE to my list. Species number 499 on my UK list I wonder what 500 will be (again)?!

Whilst there I saw Cliff Smith who’d managed to get up to the Fife bird on its second day, spending 23 hours driving there and back only for this bird to appear ‘down the road’!