Yesterday a juvenile Red-backed Shrike was found by Rhys Jones at Cabranosa. Almost a month ago, another shrike had been seen in the same vicinity and naturally, there will be interest as to whether this is the same bird. I had spent much of the day patrolling the area where the previous shrike had been seen and my efforts were unsuccessful. On returning home, I found some comments on Facebook regarding the location where the shrike was and annoyingly, it was within 100 metres of my search but on different ground. Within fifteen minutes I was sitting on a sandy track with the Red-backed Shrike feeding busily and doing what shrikes do best - sitting on top of bushes for long periods. In judging whether this is a different bird and having images of the earlier bird to hand, I was looking for something structural rather than a mere colour difference, which is always subject to lighting changes.
One feature I noticed is that the curved tip of the bill on the new bird (above) is 'more' curved, that is, the very tip itself and is unlikely to be a feature which would change. The brown mask extends lower (below eye level) on this bird than on the earlier bird. There are doubtless other plumage variations which may exist, given similar light conditions. My opinion is that this is a different shrike to the one recorded on 5th October. Comments are closed.
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