I claim not to be a twitcher, but this afternoon I made an exception.
I was in the Fen Drayton Lakes car park, waiting for a visiting group to arrive. Just as they appeared, my mobile phone rang. One of our local bird watchers was calling to tell me he had just found a great grey shrike - about 500 metres away (as the shrike flies) from where I was standing.
I took the group of students, who will be making a series of field study visits in the coming weeks, then after they'd headed back to college I did my short-distance twitch.
Great grey shrikes are often quite obliging birds, and this one was no exception, as it perched in full view of the admiring finder, one other person and myself. A fourth person arrived hot on my heels. From it's vantage point this immature bird could spot invertebrates (to eat) - and it had found numerous caterpillars before I arrived. What a lovely bird to see on a grey afternoon.
While enjoying this small predator, we heard a little owl's calls, a kingfisher called from the river, and a sparrowhawk flushed 14 snipe from the edge of the mere.
Will the great grey shrike stay around, to be enjoyed by many more bird watchers, or is this a staging post on it's migration journey? Watch this space.....