Great Grey Shrike

I broke my usual pattern and shattered the shackles of the PBC area boundary today. It is only a half-hour drive to Oakham, Rutland, from Peterborough, so I whizzed over there to see a Great Grey Shrike which has been hanging around in some allotments on Land's End Way. It was blinking freezing and the ground was solid as a rock when I arrived (and when I left), which was handy for my feet, as it saved them getting muddy. Not so handy, though for my frozen fingers and for the poor shrike who would find it hard to forage.
It took about half and hour to locate the shrike which was hanging around warming up in a hedge, all fluffed out (occasionally preening), getting the odd scolding from the local Blue Tits.
After a bit, the long-tailed beauty went up to sit on the overhead wires, from where it handily flew very close to me and I had to back off to digiscope it. The results are not too bad, but would have been so much better if the sun had come out while it was on the wires!



It appeared to be picking food off the branches, as if this were its larder; but I couldn't see either food there or thorns to impale anything...

And so it went up onto the wires to patrol the whole of the small allotment area.



Great Grey Shrike, Oakham, Rutland, 5.3.05
For larger photos, check out Weedon
Nikon Coolpix 880 + Kowa TSN-821 + 32xW LER