Red-backed Shrike breeds successfully in Shetland

A pair of Red-backed Shrikes has been photographed feeding three young on Mainland Shetland, marking confirmation of the first successful breeding attempt of the species in Britain for five years.

Images of an adult male and female tending to recently fledged young, with feathers not fully grown, taken by Roger Thomason in a Levenwick garden on 20-21 July, confirm the pair nested on the Shetland mainland. In a post on the Nature in Shetland photo group on Facebook, Thomason states that the family party has since moved on.

The female Red-backed Shrike with one of the two juveniles (Roger Thomason / Facebook).

The dramatic 20th-century decline of Red-backed Shrike as a British breeding bird means it's no surprise that it’s both Red-listed and treated as a Schedule 1 species under The Wildlife and Countryside Act. Now virtually extirpated, the last regularly breeding pair disappeared from Santon Downham, Norfolk, in 1989. Since then, breeding has been on a sporadic basis.

In 2015, a pair raised four young at an undisclosed site in Shetland. Prior to that, Red-backed Shrike nested at Dartmoor, Devon, from 2010 until 2013 at least, successfully raising young in three of those years – indeed, two pairs bred in 2011. Other birds have been seen for prolonged periods in the summer months in southern England in the 2010s (i.e. Thursley Common, Surrey, in 2018 and Beaulieu, Hampshire, and Churn, Oxfordshire, in 2015). 

It seems possible that the warming climate could assist Red-backed Shrike in recolonising some of its former haunts, if only in small numbers, although continued habitat loss and the decline of large invertebrate prey may mean sporadic breeding on British outposts such as Shetland will remain the more likely outlook.