02/06/2021 Saltwick Nab, North Yorkshire

Lesser Grey Shrike: After a couple of bad weeks of back to back dips I was relieved to have finally broken my bad streak by ticking the little beaut and adding a new bird to the list. 

When I arrived there bird was being pretty elusive and the small group of birders who made it one site before me were standing and waiting while looking on the hedge were it had spent most of the previous day. 

Eventually it was relocated to another hedge in the vicinity and was showing really well, if a little distant. 

The bird looks very similar to its cousin the great grey shrike and acts very similar too. But there are a few subtle differences. 

The shrike has a distinctive black face mask and long tail. Down the back runs a jacket of military-grey feathers and around the white brest is a pink flush. 

Very nice indeed. 

The species breeds no nearer than northern Spain and is more at home on the arid steppes of Asiatic Russia or the bush-dotted pasture of Romania. It is, in truth, mostly African, living eight months a year by hunting beetles or grasshoppers among the thorn scrub and drylands near, or south of, the Kalahari.

But the bird seemed just at home on the East Yorkshire cost of Whitby, amongst the hawthorn hedges, bramble scrub and newly sprouting cereal crops.