Johnny Brown's shrike

Brown shrike, Johnny Brown's Common

I thought I'd have an adventure before we go into a new lockdown so I went over to South Kirkby to see if the weekend's brown shrike was still about.

It's a nice trip out to the nearest station, Moorthorpe. The National Rail web set recommends going via Leeds but I find that if I go via Sheffield it's five minutes slower but just over a pound cheaper and instead of trying to navigate Leeds Station I get a trip through the Peak District.

I got to Moorthorpe Station and made my first mistake: instead of relying on my memory of earlier visits I followed Google Maps' directions which led me to a footpath that only exists if you climb over somebody's garage. (Google Maps is very good on public transport directions but hit-and-miss on pedestrian travel.) My second direction was to follow some birders down an apparent shortcut along a path through a field of potatoes. Unfortunately it didn't lead into the field further along, it ran very close to the bushes the bird was frequenting. So I turned back and went the long way round, which was no hardship.

Looking at the shrike

It was a very good-natured twitch, a couple of dozen people trying to keep a social distance while helping newcomers find the bird. Which turned out to be easy once you knew to look by the big hawthorn bush on the field margin.

I watched it for half an hour. A lovely bird but a bugger to try to photograph in a very fussy backdrop from a hundred yards away! (That's my excuse for a lot of inartistic record shots.)

There'd been a suggestion earlier on that the bird was a red-tailed rather than a brown shrike. I'm unfamiliar with both these birds — either would be a lifer — so I took notes in the hopes of being able to clinch the ID from references at home.

• Definitely a shrike
• Brown above, wings darker, russet wash to crown, no white patches on wing
• Bright dove-grey underparts, contrasting white throat, warm salmon flanks
• Black mask, pale supercilium
• Bill dark, big
• Rump and tail coverts paler, redder than back and mantle
• Tail brown, only slightly darker than rump, some of the tail feathers looked slightly bleached at the base
• In the field the tail had a tawny cast to it, in photographs it looks redder

I'm no expert and entirely open to correction but I think the whole dark wings, the high contrast between throat and breast, and the lack of contrast between tail and rump seem to confirm brown shrike.

Brown shrike

Brown shrike

I had a wander round the common to see what else was about. There had been a lot of black-headed gulls flying high overhead, fifty of them were on the pond with a dozen coots, a family of mute swans and a single first-Winter common gull. I walked under the railway bridges towards South Kirkby Green. The duck pond held a couple of dozen mallard and a handful of shovelers dozed by the margins.

A nice trip out and an interesting puzzle of a bird.