Looking for the Great Grey Shrike at Stora Amundön

I check Artportalen, a birding site here in Sweden, yesterday and saw that a Great Grey Shrike was reported at Stora Amundön. I then decided to quickly write a blog post and then take the car the 20 minutes drive to Amundön to see if I could find the bird.

I like Shrikes like these but I have never taken a photo of a Great Grey Shrike before so I didn´t want to miss the opportunity by not going there the same day I saw the report. I missed the Northern Hawk Owl because I didn´t head to Brudarebacken straight after work and I didn´t want to make the same mistake twice.

I arrived at Amundön shortly after 16 and soon I meet another person with the same thing in mind. He was going home and sadly he hadn´t seen the Shrike. I decided to make do a short walk to the first bay to see what I could find but the only reward was that I got a little exercise.

Today I headed back to Amundön to look for the Great Grey Shrike and this time I was there in the morning. The wind was harder today but I had hope of getting a picture or two of the bird. The luck was with me today when a bird watcher I spoke to informed me that he had seen the Great Grey Shrike in the big paddock. I soon discovered the bird and could see that it used to bushes as vantage point for it food search. Now I made the wrong move and stayed chatting with the bird watcher looking at the Shrike from afar. It was wrong because as soon as I got nearer it took off and to up a spot on the bush the furthest away.

This picture isn´t what I wanted when I saw how close it stayed to the footpath. I had a completely different goal at hand but it wasn´t to be because I just took 3 photos before the bird went missing. I searched for it for another hour without any luck. And I just took one more photo of the day and that was of a Mute Swan pair that flew over my head.

Not the best of luck but I know have the knowledge that the Great Grey Shrike seems to stay here during the coming months. This means I have set myself a new goal and that is to get some good photos of the bird. It is sort of a regal bird with the posture it have and I want to capture it.