3rd time's a charm!

Taking full advantage of having a working automobile again I made my way over to Harrington Airfield at first light this morning hoping to strike third time lucky and finally see the Great Grey Shrike that seems to have chosen Harrington as its overwintering destination - I do hope it stays for the duration! Anyway, arriving on site just after 7.45am I was pleased to find myself being the only person present (because it is likely to be the first visitors of the day who will accidently put up a SEO) and wasted no time in walking the path through the scrub towards the first set of bunkers. I'd just reached the first set of bunkers when I picked up a bird flying straight towards me at a lowish height from the North. Looked a bit like a magpie in flight. Only smaller. Thats the boy! It did the decent thing and dropped onto a perch not too far away either - perfect for a bit of gratuitous scoping!
It stayed in this area for the best part of half an hour and even allowed me to move a tad nearer so I could take some crappy record shots as it flitted from perch to perch. What a cracking bird!

After feasting my eyes on the bird for a good while I was cocking about on my phone sending a couple of emails and whatnot and looked up and realised it had gone! Bugger! Another birder turned up shortly afterwards who had seen it flying southwards from the area that I had seen it in towards a very distant wood. I called time at that point as it seemed reasonable to suggest the bird wouldn't be returning for a good while and went and spent a couple of hours at Blueberry farm in the hope of shorties again. No shorties but loads of migrant thrushes along with single Merlin and Treecreeper.

On the way home Stanford reservoir produced this nice Grey Wagtail along the inflow channel too. The below image is phone-binned, my first attempt at that in ages!

So a productive morning out birding.....no owls unfortunately, that might change later though!