A two-shrike day

It's now well into June and I still haven't had a lifer yet. Last year I had, by this time, got Ross's gull, snowy owl, white-winged black scoter, Savi's warbler, green heron, American bittern and white stork. This morning there were two potential targets on offer - a black-headed bunting in Flamborough and a lesser grey shrike in Horsey. After a quick conversation with Lee the night before we decided on the shrike as it had a better back-up cast and was closer! The weather forecast was dire though and I had an early start, picking up Lee and Tony first.
By 7.30 or so we were pulling up to the end of the track leading to the field where the shrike was seen the night before. Fortunately the weather, despite drenching it down during the journey, had cleared to be just being dull and cold but dry. It was a fairly short walk down the track to where we could see a small herd of cows by a fence. Perched on top of it was greyish bird darting down onto the grass to grab breakfast before returning to its perch.

Lesser greys are closely related to our more common grey shrike. They should be in southern Europe but you get one or two most years overshooting during the Summer. They are becoming much less common compared to twenty years ago. This one has a beautiful crimson tinge to its plumage making it a full adult together with its piratical eye-stripe.
This one spent the 30 minutes we were watching it feeding off the bushes and fence line but was quite wary.

Certainly whilst we were there it kept its distance and would fly from one corner to the other of the field. Good start to the day though, a lifer in the bag finally.....
With the weather still holding out we set off for our next target, another shrike. This one was female woodchat shrike 30 minutes down the coast at Kessingland. We had rough directions for the bird but once we got onto the beach where it was last seen we struggled to make sense of them. Fortunately a local birder managed to put us right and we finally connected with it sitting in the scrub on the under cliff.

This is a female but is much more strongly marked than the lesser grey. The bold brown cap stood out very well. Like its cousin from before it was feeding voraciously, flitting from bush to ground and back again.

Again it was wary but it let us get a bit closer before diving off to another bush. By now the weather was starting to turn and the rain was setting in. The happy trio set off back to the car by which time it was drenching it down.
We did have one last target before heading back, a quail. This had been seen and heard at Hazlewood common further down the coast. I had been here before for Arctic redpoll so it looked reasonably familiar. This time the field was full of pea plants rather than stubble. We found another local who had just heard the quail calling. We stood by a bush in the rain and finally heard the "wet-my-lips" call coming almost from beneath our feet. Quail are notoriously hard to see and so this one proved. For 10 minutes it called and we were standing on it but you just could not see it, even in short grass. Finally though it gave up and flew out of the cover into the next-door pea field. By now very wet but very satisfied we retired to the car for coffee and sandwiches before trekking back home. We got away with the weather  and saw all 3 of our targets. The Flamborough bunting was no show so we made the right call as well. Finally off the mark on the lifer front but still a lot more to get hopefully.