Find your own shrikes

Red-backed Shrike is a regular ‘drift migrant’ across the North Sea, and consequently tends to be most frequent on the east and south coasts. Arrivals are concentrated on Shetland and Orkney, indicating a Fennoscandian origin, but many of the east coast watchpoints produce multiple birds in autumn: try Spurn YWT, (TA 4011), Flamborough Head (TA 2570), both East Yorkshire, and various north Norfolk sites. Sightings can be found on BirdGuides.com, but you also stand a fair chance of finding your own, even occasionally on a scrubby inland patch.

The occasional pair continues to breed in Britain, most often on Dartmoor, Devon, but exact locations are closely guarded to prevent egg thieves from scuppering the birds’ reproductive chances.

If present, a Red-backed Shrike will be fairly obvious, frequently perching on the tops of hawthorn and similar shrubs, and even sometimes being mobbed by smaller less predatory passerines.

Daurian Shrike is considerably rarer, but has been almost annual since 1993. The distribution of records vaguely mirrors that of Red-backed, with a noticeable bias towards Shetland, though Orkney has had very few birds. Other areas with potential to produce individuals are Yorkshire, north Norfolk, Kent, Dorset and Scilly, but bear in mind that Daurian Shrike is almost always found on the coast and at the obvious bird observatories and watchpoints. Keep your eyes peeled for news.

Turkestan Shrike is substantially rarer than Daurian, but where its identification has been clinched, it has occurred in Kent, Co Durham, Somerset, Cornwall, Anglesey and north Norfolk – far less predictably at the regular watchpoints, as can be seen from

the wide-ranging spread of these records.