ML179928131

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Around 7:30 Me and Ian were standing at the front watching the morning flight when we got radioed by Siobhan she had a weird bird she didn't recognise. She is very familiar with many of the North-American birds, so we immediately knew this had to be something good. We ran back to the station, still somewhat in disbelief we were actually about to see something highly mega. When we got to the station it all went very fast. Siobhan came around the corner and it took me less than a millisecond to realize she was holding BC's first BROWN SHRIKE in her hands, being familiar with the species from Asia and Europe (the latter as a vagrant). There were moments of yelling, chaos and disbelief at this point. We were able to radio Dave to come over from the nearby Pedder Bay banding station and band this bird, as we had never banded shrikes before and were wondering what size it needed. Dave arrived only moments later and was able to correctly gauge and estimate the bird's band size. We all looked down at this bird and came to the conclusion the pale fringes on its mantle, the pale bass of the lower mandible and the diffuse earspot were characteristic for a hatch year bird. Other characteristics of Brown Shrike are the overall ground colour and of course the typical tail shape, with the outer two pairs of retrices being of increasing length (outer ones being the shortest ones) which creates an overall impression of a rounded tail, which is different from other shrikes including Red-backed and Isabelline. Lots of photos were taken, a feather sample was collected for any potential future purposes and the bird was released near a rose bush, where it quickly perched and dissappeared. 3 hours later, Ian and me were walking along the fence of the disclosed area within the military area, when we heard a sudden hard rattle coming from a bunch of rose bushes. This was very loud and sounded like no other bird we were familiar with. Ian was able to secure a recording of the bird, after it alarmed when a COHA flew over. We were almost convinced this was the shrike, although it was a bit away from where we released it and we weren't able to see it as it was calling from dense rose thicket behind the fence. Another hour later, by now 4 hours after the release (around 12:00) I went back to the exact same spot from where it called and started pishing, after which the bird suddenly popped up from the exact same rose thicket him and Ian had heard it before. It was alert and active, inspecting its surroundings after which it flew off again. Moments later, the bird was observed again siting in a young pine tree a bit in the background, and was hawking for insects here. It was last observed in the nearby aspens where it skulked around in some lower branches. This represents the first record for BC and the 2nd for Canada. A total cosmic mindfucker. I want to thank all of my friends that were present today for this great teamwork in getting this record first of all found, correctly processed and documented. Beers tonight!

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

Lens

EF400mm f/5.6L USM

ISO

1000

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/5.6

Shutter speed

1/1000 sec

Dimensions

3000 pixels x 1928 pixels

Original file size

3.35 MB