The first breeding record of a Great Grey Shrike pair exhibiting phenotypic characters of "Homeyer's Grey Shrike" Lanius excubitor homeyeri subspecies in Poland

• Main Author: Beuch, Szymon
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Polish
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Lanius excubitor
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/5889136; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5889136

A pair of adult Great Grey Shrikes Lanius excubitor with 2–3 fledged young birds was observed on June 26th – July 1st 2020 in the vicinity of Chwoszcz and Kopienica settlements (Upper Silesia). The behaviour of birds (young ones begging for food, following the parent and being fed) indicated a breeding nearby. All observed individuals showed the plumage characters typical for the eastern subspecies, „Homeyer’s Grey Shrike” L. e. homeyeri.  e birds had large and wide ???? ashes on primaries and secondaries (white reaching the penultimate inner secondary), all white two outermost rectrices and grey plumage parts clearly lighter than in the nominate subspecies. ‚Homeyer’s Grey Shrike’ is seldom but annually observed in Poland. It is probably overlooked due to a large variability of traits and the associated identi???? cation issues (good photographs of birds in liight required). The taxon is most often recorded in the autumn-winter period (Sep-Apr), mainly in southern and eastern Poland. The observations from the breeding season are scarce, with just six confirmed cases of breeding (2003, 2013, 2016, twice in 2018, 2019). So far, however, they all involved mixed pairs – with one bird showing the characters of homeyeri subspecies and the other one of the nominate form. The currently described record is the seventh for the country and the ???? rst one, where probably both birds belonged to the homeyeri subspecies. There were 34 records of ‚Homeyer’s Grey Shrike’ until the end of 2019 in Silesia and the current one is the second known breeding case in the region.