Brown Shrike? Johnny Brown's Common

I've been really trying to avoid twitching over the past few weeks because it just doesn't seem the right thing to do at the moment. However, when I got a last minute job near Doncaster today, I realised that it was just about five miles down the road from Johnny Brown's Common and decided that I may as well call in for a look at the stunning adult male brown shrike which has been present for a few days. Actually it's not really on the common, it's on the edge of an arable field and since I'd only been to the site once before I wasn't really sure where to park or how to then get to where the shrike was. However eventually I found my way to the bird and found a small group of about 15 birders watching it, all suitably socially distanced.

To be honest it proved a bit of a pain this morning, spending most of its time very low down in a hawthorn bush and often hidden from view by branches and tall vegetation. The wind didn't help either, blowing the vegetation around constantly, and though the photo above may make it look like the shrike was easy enough to see, in truth it was hidden behind the vegetation as much as it was in view. All of this made focusing on the bird a nightmare and as such I'm very pleased with the phone scoped photo I managed to get. A couple of times it flew out of the bush flycatching before returning to the same perch.

There are some great, sharp photos of this bird all over the internet at the moment, both perched and in flight, showing all kinds of features yet even so there's a debate about the identification. Most people seem to favour brown shrike, but that might be down to wishful thinking rather than a good knowledge of the identification features, for example, how many adult brown and adult Turkestan shrikes have most birders seen and are they aware of the subtle differences? 

Turkestan shrike is of course one of the two species which used to be called Isabelline shrike, the other being durian. Interestingly nobody seems to be saying that this bird could a durian shrike so obviously adult durian and Turkestan can't be that similar visually even though they used to be classed as the same species, whereas brown and Turkestan must be very similar. Ultimately we may have to wait for the lab results of a DNA sample before we know if it was a good day or a great day!

I've seen two Turkestan shrikes but never brown so guess which side I'm coming down on? Go brown! Either way being an adult male it's a cracking bird and well worth seeing.

Assuming that it is brown shrike, this takes my UK life list to 435. 

It was certainly a nightmare trying to focus, particularly when I was doing it on my phone through the scope.