A Shrike Delight 6th April 2025

I do love to be beside the seaside especially when it involves an unusual bird that is in a place that is very familiar and dear to me. That place being Newhaven in East Sussex.This is where a second year female Woodchat Shrike was discovered on 4th April. using a rusty chainlink fence below the cliffs on which to perch and hunt its invertebrate prey while a  strong easterly wind blew and the sun sparkled on the sea.

Dear old Newhaven, not yet having quite reconciled its struggle between tackiness and gradual gentrification. Still a port but now the cargo ships are gone and Newhaven has sold  its soul to the French who own the harbour and the ferry to Dieppe and have closed the west pier and beach. 

Upmarket seafront housing is being built, centred around the marina at the mouth of the River Ouse but the seaside part of the town still holds a quaint run down charm with old ramshackle buildings still holding on amongst the new builds and for me so many memories, chiefly centred, pre French, around the west pier, where in April and May for many years I would seawatch from under the lighthouse for up to fourteen hours on a good day, logging the migration of seabirds up the channel. Many are the stories I can tell from my times at the end of the pier but that is for another time

All this was a long time ago and it has been some years since I have visited Newhaven.Today the alluring presence of the shrike rectified that as I made the long car journey with Mrs U from my home in Oxfordshire to the coast of Sussex..

Woodchat Shrikes are regarded as a scarce visitor to Britain, mainly in Spring, overshooting from their winter home in tropical Africa on their way to their breeding areas in southern Europe which range from Iberia east to the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East and Iran. 

Although classed as a scarce they became so regular arriving in Britain that since 1996 they have been removed as a species considered by the BBRC (British Birds Rarities Committee), although they still consider records of those  that are not of the nominate race. Although the south coast of England is the obvious place for them to be found in Spring, a couple of years ago I encountered an autumn juvenile in Shetland of all places and vagrant birds have been discovered throughout the length of Britain at various times.

Up to 2014 there have been 49 records of Woodchat Shrikes in Sussex.

In appearance they are predominantly black and white with an attractive bright chestnut crown and nape, the contrasting pattern of black and white  particularly striking when the bird flies.Also noticeable is the black face mask below the chestnut crown..Both sexes look similar although the females are duller and less well marked.

A long drive in sunny conditions with Mrs U and inevitably,  heavy motorway traffic on a sunny Sunday eventually terminated around lunchtime on the concrete hardstanding that serves as a free car parking area between the cliffs, topped by the wartime Newhaven Fort, now a tourist attraction and the closed west beach. The shrike had chosen well as the area it frequented was the site of a former funfair, all trace of which has now long gone, leaving the area awaiting redevelopment with a restaurant planned (good luck with that)  and currently fenced off from the public.

Birders could view the shrike through the fence by looking across to the fencing on the opposite side right below the cliffs.I approached two birders poking lenses through the fence that sealed off what used to be the funfair site and they pointed out the shrike which was perched more distantly than I imagined on that part of the fenced off area that ran below the cliffs. 

The shrike spent its entire time on one short section of the fence line, flying from the fence to pick off prey from the ground or the bushes under the cliffs behind the fence ..

That was pretty much all it did while I was there, perching on the fence with a remarkably mobile tail which it constantly dipped and swayed, possibly as a counterbalance to the strong wind which buffeted it.

I have seen a few good birds by these cliffs over the years, perhaps most memorably a male Pied Wheatear shortly after we moved to Sussex in 1990 and very nearly my first twitch. Happy days. A Nightjar arriving in the middle of the day, having just come in off the sea on its Spring migration was memorable as too was an adult Rosy Starling that spent a week in October 2010 in the brambles below the cliffs, and also more Black Redstarts than you could imagine.

Those halcyon days are gone now but stood on the hardstanding, the lighthouse in the distance at the end of the west pier, the towering white chalk face of Seaford Head across the bay and the sun shining on a turquoise sea had me going for a while.

Even Mrs U felt the longing and to tarry would have only made things worse so we said our goodbyes to the shrike and Newhaven. I wonder if I will ever come back again?