Portland - Thu 25 Oct

After a morning in Exeter at a seminar I ended up being home from work earlier than normal so I took Ellie and Tristan down to Portland with the sole intention of twitching the Isabelline Shrike that had been found on Tuesday. We arrived at 4.00pm and hot-footed it up to the Top Fields, seeing a large flock of Linnets and several Meadow Pipits along the way. After chatting to a few birders we found ourselves facing the prospect that this was not going to be easy...the bird had not been seen for over two hours and time and the light were against us. We spent about an hour wandering around seeing a good number of Redwings and quite a few Stonechats but no sign of the shrike.
We had to head back towards the car as it was getting late, my time was up, and I was certain this was another dip...and this time it would have been a lifer. Then it all changed as we joined the path at the top of Culverwell we spotted a couple of birders and they were on the shrike. I rushed over, Tristan bouncing away on my back and Ellie struggling to keep up, and as soon as I reached the first birder asked to view it in his scope. What a wonderful bird, subtle colours and a real beauty and so Isabelline Shrike is added to my list at last (this bird is of the nominate race, sometimes called Daurian Shrike). As it happened it was a good job I looked through someone elses scope to see it as no sooner had I started to set my scope up the bird flew and we could not relocate it.
I also managed to add Siberian Stonechat to my Dorset list (this was also only the second I've seen in the UK) with a female-type bird seen really well in the next field...so two cracking birds in a few minutes. We also had a late Swallow pass overhead and then back to the car and home after a brilliant afternoon.