A great half hour

Friday morning had been a bit of a rush so headed down to try and find the Shrike. It has been ranging quite widely in the last week and finding it never mind getting a view had been hard. My experience with this bird that has now been resident for ten weeks, is that if you don't get straight onto it you probably won't see it at all.

As you can see, half way along the road there it was, 30m away atop a large bush. I watched for three minutes or so and then it flew.
Strong low purposeful flight with a slight undulation then............

a ten second hover before deciding to carry on to the hedgeline near the road. It disappeared momentarily before re-appearing low down at the roadside. The beauty then allowed me to approach to about thirty feet which is where I got the header shot. Dull light, hand held, high iso, loads of noise but comments on one of my previous posts has made me relish the quality of the moment rather than the quality of the result. After all, I bet there's not many get so close

A more typical view.............dare I trip out the old favourite........ from an undisclosed location!

Better still after watching the bird from 12.45 to 1.10 when it was never more than 30m away he offered up another close up but this time through the hedge.

I bet its going to be a boring weekend as I've used up all my birding tokens.