What did for Britain’s first Long-tailed Shrike - was it a hungry cat or was it the cold and exhaustion?

                                         

Was vagrant  bird 'exotic dinner' for lucky cat? How the Aberdeen Press and Journal reported the shrike's visit 

THIS summer’s  sightings of Long-tailed Shrike - firstly at  Crail in Fife, then at  Eastleach Martin, near Gloucestershire - have sparked recollections of the first British record of the species.

This was the bird that showed briefly on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides in late-October and early-November 2000.

It was  first spotted as "a bird with a long tail" on October 27 by a police sergeant, Jon Brain, who alerted a more experienced birder, Andrew Stevenson, who caught up with it as it was perched on a fence outside the local Ben Mhor stores in Benbecula.

His tentative identification was confirmed by experts from the RSPB and the Scottish Wildlife Trust who put out the word to the outside world.

Cue:  a speedy  influx of 200+ twitchers, some arriving on by private flight (at least seven flights were chartered) and some by fishing boat or by the regular Caledonian  MacBrayne ferry from Uig to Loch Addy.

Once it had been discovered, there was disappointment that the bird mostly skulked out of view within a willow bush, providing few clear views.

But this slight sense of deflation was nothing compared to the mission-unaccomplished desolation of one group who had to turn back to Uig after their boat encountered engine trouble en route through the Little Minch.

Alas, beyond the Saturday of that weekend the Kazakhstan  visitant was no longer seen prompting speculation in the Aberdeen Press and Journal newspaper that what it dubbed "the long distance flier" had become an exotic dinner for a lucky island cat.

The more realistic appraisal from the man who found the bird, Sgt Brain, was that the bird was no more likely to have fallen victim to a feline than any other bird

His reckoning was that, on the basis of its "wet and bedraggled" appearance it had succumbed to the cold.

He was quoted in the November 9 edition of the Stornoway Gazette and West Coast Advertiser as saying it looked a "bit dischuffed".

But back to the recent arrivals. 

Given the high  August temperatures in much of Britain, cold weather is unlikely to have proved a challenge for them.

The Fife bird only stayed briefly, but its Gloucestershire bird has lingered. 

It is possible that the "two" are, in fact, the same bird, but the general view seems to be that they are separate.