Butcher bird haunts the heath

The forest can be rather bleak in winter, with little sight or sound of the bird life that abounds during the warmer months of summer. As such, I did not set my expectations very high when I set off to visit the survey square allocated to me for Bird Atlas 2007-11 (www.birdatlas.net), a four year stock take of our breeding and wintering birds. The survey square was dominated by plantation woodland and I knew that unless I stumbled onto a roving flock of tits I would not see that many birds. Still, it needed to be covered and I set off in an optimistic frame of mind, glad to be out on such a fine winter morning.

As I worked my way through the mixed-aged stands of conifers I added small, but increasing, numbers of birds to my field log, collectively amounting to most of the range of species that I had expected to see. Then, completely unexpectedly, I spotted a great grey shrike sat, sentinel-like, in the top of a small birch in a piece of clearfell. This magnificent individual was the first great grey shrike that I had found myself, something which made the sighting all the more special.

Small numbers of these shrikes winter in Britain, favouring open areas with scattered bushes from which they can scan for prey; the second part of its Latin name, ‘excubitor’, means ‘sentinel’ and refers to this habit of utilising prominent perches. The other part of the Latin name, ‘Lanius’, derives from ‘lanio’, which means ‘to tear into pieces’. This is a reference to the bird’s predatory ways and hints at the old country name of butcher bird, applied to this and other shrikes. These birds feed on large insects, small birds and small mammals which, in times of plenty, they impale on thorns or the barbs of barbed-wire fences, just as a butcher would with cuts of meat. Caching prey in this way is an insurance policy in case of tougher times ahead.

Because my visit to the survey square was timed, I could not spend long admiring the shrike and so had to move on. Once the timed recording was complete I returned to the spot where I had seen the bird but it had gone and I failed to turn it up again before having to head home. Some of these wintering shrikes establish winter feeding territories on which they remain over many weeks but others are mobile. This bird may have been one of these or it may simply have found this part of the forest unsatisfactory. Two others have been seen locally in recent days, could one of these be the bird that I had chanced upon?