Redbacked Shrike sighting

A couple of weeks into April I was walking the dogs in the fields from low road. It was early morning and looked to be a promising day. The dogs were dragging behind with too many lovely smells to hurry themselves. I myself had reached the footbridge by the gate and turned to wait for them to catch me up.

Sitting on the gate watching me was a simply lovely looking bird a bit bigger than a sparrow and such wonderful markings I had never seen anything like him before. He was shoulder height with me and about eight foot away, I chatted to him telling him how handsome he was and I could surely remember his markings for when I got home to look him up in the RSPB bird identifier page as I often do trying to improve my knowledge of our country birds and sea wildlife.

He had the mask of Zorro like a band across his eyes with the most beautiful grey/blue cap and striking reddy brown back. As he flew up to the trees I caught a flash of white, he had made my day such a lovely thing.

I met up with my friend and we continued our walk, not seeing the bird again.
Returning home and a cuppa later I switched on the laptop to start some work and remembered to check the RSPB web site first. I scrolled through all the possibilities until I came upon him, a red backed shrike, and now I new.

But no, how could it be, reading about him he was on the red alert list with only five known breeding pairs in this country! I felt I had to tell someone. I contacted the local RSPB guy from the web site to let him know and he was very nice but thought it was more likely to be the grey backed shrike or the wheatear. And so I checked them out.

Sorry folks and all that I know I am my only witness but it was definitely not either of those, this little fella stared at me for several long seconds before taking flight and he was definitely the red backed shrike.

I now always take bins with me and my hubby bought me some with a built in camera just incase I spot him again. The following Sunday he was mentioned in Country file saying they have not been seen in this country since the 80’s! How quite unbelievable that I actually saw one and here in Dovercourt!