Long-tailed Shrike, Crail, 7th July 2026

June and early July were contrasting times for me in terms of birding.  I have stayed local almost all of that time, but my one twitch was a big twitch.

I walked a lot in June.  I don't usually - the horse flies and mosquitoes have a deep desire to sample my blood, and my immune system does not enjoy their attention.  I tend to only go birding near the coast during these months, focusing on tern colonies and enjoying the breeze rather than being eaten alive.  This month I couldn't do that really, with only a visit to Seaforth to squint with migraine-inducing focus through the fence while trying (successfully - well done Lee) to find Roseate Terns with Lee.  While we were at Seaforth, Lee told me about a conversation he had had with two birders on Anglesey recently, and how he was struck by the gentle joyfulness of one of these women who was incredibly knowledgeable and generous with her time and expertise.  He felt that her whole approach to wildlife was that the more she knew and experienced, the more obvious joy she took from the simplest aspects of the study of the environment.  Not becoming jaded, cynical, sarcastic.  Not descending into the boy-trying-to-be-a-man banter of the lowest common denominator.  Not furrowed brows and ignorance, or bombastic showing off and list size.  Quiet, warm, welcoming, inclusive joy.  It made me think about how I come across as a birder when I'm out in the field.  Not online, where I can curate my appearance, like a lot of our Tiktok and YouTube content creators do, cultivating a false mindfulness that evaporates when you actually know them.  Who actually am I when I'm birding?

I stayed local during the month, doing lots of solo wandering and checking on breeding birds across much of the 10km circle.  I wasn't really targeting particular species or doing anything systematic; I just walked and saw what I saw.  Redstart feeding a fledgling at White Coppice was a fantastic encounter, and a summer plumage Mediterranean Gull bathing at Cutacre was the first record there I'm aware of in the last five years at least.  Corn Buntings and Yellow Wagtails in good numbers at Rixton where at least three calling Quails were drawing people in made my day, and the annual return of Egyptian Geese at Pennington Flash was a nice highlight.  Two Black-necked Grebes dispersing from Woolston Eyes breeding grounds to show very well at Moses Gate Park in Bolton captivated me for a couple of hours - I love the difference in character between them in March when they return and are skittish and shy, and their summer glory once they've bred, confident and bold in the colours of a dragon, their smoke-toned plumage and wild red eyes offset by the delicate golden fan on either side of their heads.

News of an absolute mega rarity broke - Long-tailed Shrike, apparently found by a student surveying Corn Bunting breeding success on a farm, and querying with their supervisor the strange looking Red-backed Shrike they (very understandably) thought it might be.  I once spent a week going through every bird species officially recorded as wild in the UK, looking at photos, making a mental wish list of the ones I'd most like to see.  At the very top, along with Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, was Long-tailed Shrike.

A lot of birders I know have a thing about shrikes.  I wonder if it's their character, the way they perch out and own their territory with a confidence that belies their size.  I wonder if it's the neatness of the colours on a shrike, the way that they have such distinct, bold delineated colour patches rather than being a melange of browns.  I wonder if the bandit masks allow us to humanise them a little more than other birds, giving us the focal point of the eye stripe, making eye-contact natural and giving them a feeling of intelligent connection that we don't have with every small bird species.  Whatever the reason, shrikes have a special appeal.  

So I rushed to open the notification on BirdGuides without looking at how far from home the bird had been found.  Crail, I saw.  Where the hell is Crail?  Fife.  188 miles in a straight line.  Well, bugger.  I was trying not to travel very far, to save money, time, and so on.  I was conflicted.  Long journeys recently have left me feeling hungover for a couple of days afterwards, and I didn't want to do a solo twitch.  Lee messaged at that moment to ask me if I fancied it, and with his generous offer to drive (as always - I definitely owe him a few lifts!) I couldn't pass up the opportunity.  Meeting just off the M6 at 2.45am we set off north and drove through the green landscape south of Edinburgh hoping against hope that the shrike had stayed in the hedgerow it had been found in.  Arriving at Barnsmuir Farm Shop (the owners of which had generously allowed people to park in their carpark) and walking up the track towards a small crowd of birders at 7.30am we heard a huge number of Corn Buntings and Yellowhammers and the numbers of hirundines put Manchester to shame.  This is clearly a farm used to looking after wildlife, and is to be applauded for that.

A pile of potato cartons and obscure farm machinery marked the best spot to watch from, and as Lee and I arrived there, the small crowd that had formed parted to let us in and give us good spots to view from, and I realised that I knew almost everyone there.  It was such a positive jolt to realise that there were a dozen birders that I'd got to know over the years standing together, and the pleasure in seeing them was something I probably wouldn't have understood except that I've spent the last six weeks largely on my own.  I hope I'm right in saying that those people looked happy to see me, and if they weren't they faked it convincingly well so that I felt like they were!

The only negative note of the whole day was that a small group of photographers with the type of lenses that are so powerful that they can see for miles were doing their usual trick of standing too close to the shrike's favourite perch.  I'm sure the heroic number of likes on Instagram or X makes them feel great, but honestly lads, getting photo of the week on a little website isn't an accolade worth threatening the welfare of the bird or spoiling everyone else's day.  This had the obvious effect of forcing the bird to a more distant perch, where, after ten minutes tense wait and search, the man next to me found the bird preening and being mobbed by a Blue Tit, a family of Tree Sparrows and a Willow Warbler.  For the next hour this beautifully subtly-hued shrike moved back and forth low down in hawthorn and bramble, catching flies and bees and taking care of his moulting feathers.  The long tail was obvious, and the bandit mask gave me that jolt of connection via very good scope views.  It was everything I'd imagined when I made my list of birds to see in the UK.

The shrike never came close enough for a photo, and the blurry screen grabs from rubbish phone scoping were the best I could do, but we travelled home elated at our success.  I thought about rare birds, and why we twitch them for a lot of the journey back.  In its own right, the Long-tailed Shrike was a beautiful, unusual, rare bird - the first mainland record and only the second to come to Britain after an elusive one in the Scottish Isles 20-odd years ago.  So I'd have probably travelled to see it just on those merits, but there's another side to twitching.  Good company in the car, a chance to catch up and deepen friendships with people, and catching up with those that you see birding is as much of a pleasure as seeing the rare bird.  The positive energy of those people, the smiles, the welcome, the community of it - for someone like me who struggles with being part of a wider community - well, those things are powerful and have more of an impact than anyone else would ever know.  Hard to explain to most people who don't suffer from feeling like an outsider in their own skin on a regular basis, but being made to feel like you fit in and are welcome is incredibly empowering.

It made me think about how I treat other people when I'm out birding.  Am I welcoming?  Helpful?  Do I patronise people and get caught up in being a pompous mansplaining bore?  I would hope that I add positivity to birding, to twitching, to everyday encounters with people rather than draining anything good away.  A lot of twitching is selfishness, wanting to get the best view, sharpening elbows to get to the front, impatience and the whole other set of nonsense that comes from the photographers seeming to never be as close as they want to be, and it can be easy to spoil someone else's experience while out in the field.  Being friendly, calmly enthusiastic, and welcoming is never the wrong approach.  The safety of the bird and the inclusion of the people are twin foundations we shouldn't lose sight of.