You can rightly call yourself lucky when you deliberately return to the same spot—hoping to get a good shot of a bird you’d previously only seen and photographed from afar—and manage to capture it without any special preparation or time to spare. I had spotted the Red-backed Shrike near the Reiningishausen ruins a good two and a half weeks ago. I finally made it back there the day before yesterday, but at first, there was no sign of him. There were swans, ducks, little grebe chicks, and the stork family I’ve been watching for a while up in their nest—but the bird with the “Beagle Boy” bandit mask was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, I found him and his mate on the other side of the water. I had actually just wanted to see if the light on the stork nest was better from that angle, but unexpected things often happen… he was far away, sure, but at least the Shrike family was still around.

Yesterday, I met up with two of my best friends there—we planned to cycle a bit further—so I had very little time or hope of getting close to him, given the entourage and the lack of time for photography. As fate would have it, he flew right in front of us—from the field, across the path, and into the trees—and sat there patiently until we had all stopped and I had managed to fish my camera out of my backpack. Thanks for posing, Mr. Shrike—next time I’ll call ahead, I promise.