When I was ringing in Bahrain at Alba Marsh I met a
birdwatcher and photographer called Jehad Alammadi who told me about an
interesting shrike he had seen and photographed in Bahrain earlier in the year
that may have been a Bay-backed Shrike. This would have been a first for
Bahrain as far as I know if it was one so I asked Jehad if he could send me a
photo of the bird. He kindly did this saying he had taken the photos of the
bird on 27 April 2013 in Hidd Town near an area called ‘Dry Dock’ which it is
located near the sea on the north east of the Kingdom of Bahrain. When I got
the photos the bird did not look like a Bay-backed Shrike but rather a
Red-backed Shrike x Turkestan Shrike hybrid as it had a lot of white in the
closed wing and rufous outer tail feathers. The black face mask and amount of
black in the wings did not seem enough to me for Bay-backed Shrike. I was not
certain if this was the parentage so sent it to Brian Small and Alan Dean for
their opinions. I received the following from Alan “You are right that
it is not a Bay-backed Shrike but appears to be a Red-backed x Isabelline
Shrike hybrid, with Turkestan the obvious candidate for the Isabelline taxon
but too little influence in the plumage to say this with certainty. The
shrike is clearly an adult male and in Bay-backed would have a much deeper
extent of black across the forehead, a richer coloured mantle, a richer and
more prominent patch of colour on the flanks and a more solid area of black on
the wing (embracing the ‘shoulder’ area). Structurally, the tail would be
proportionately longer. Overall, the Bahrain shrike looks quite close to
Red-backed but the photos reveal a rufous hue in the outer tail-feathers (wrong
for Bay-backed and Red-backed) and it is reasonable to assume that this
indicates introgression from Isabelline Shrike. Such birds are encountered not
infrequently in the Middle East. There are photos of hybrids similar to the
Bahrain bird in E. Panov’s ‘The True Shrikes of the World’, in Fig. 17.7”
The photographs below were taken by Jehad Alammadi and the copyright remains with him and I thank him for allowing me to use them on my website.
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