Chasing the little grey dot

Well the sunlight was perfect and my motivation for working less than so, therefore on the way to a meeting in Ponteland I called by the Carr on the off chance and there she blew.
Another classic view of the Great Grey Shrike. A little tired of dot in the distance photos I decided to put some effort in and met a couple of chaps, JayBee and Ray on a similar mission along with Sedgy Wobbler. The bird, having given us the slip once, re-appeared on a fence post to the north of the bumpy road.Managed to get round behind it to lessen the harsh sunlight which was later to be my undoing.
It eventually flew off west and I followed but could not refind it so off to work. The weather turned gloomy as did my mood but daylight is so precious and I returned to find MH sketching the bird and the two chaps now concentrating on the owls. As I approached Mike he indicated the bird was flying toward me. I waited and eventually got the little chap with background controllers.

He was doing the same circuit as earlier and after a couple of half decent opportunities north of the road I walked back down west for the umpteenth time following the trail as earlier. I could see the bird in the hedgerow to the left and walked on only to realise it had flown right up next to me. I slowly got to an opening in the hedge and there it was..............perfectly backlit by the now brightly shining sun. Fumbling with the exposure compensation didn't help me much and three shots of a GGS silhouette were had.

I've messed this around in Photoshop but quality is lost and I think I prefer the header image especially (although I didn't realise at the time) as it was looking my way. A nice day with a result and some grand crack along the way.