In early spring, a pair of long-tailed shrikes (lanius schach, 棕背伯劳) made a home in the marshy reeds at Xianjia Lake (咸嘉湖). Their nest was near a favoured fishing spot for egrets and night-herons, which the mother shrike tirelessly attacked and displaced from dawn until late. The fishing birds accepted this harassment gracefully, but often just as one left another one arrived so that the constant assaulting must have been tiring work for the mother shrike, on top of tending a nest and later feeding newborns. By June several of her fledglings were flying on their own and only recently have these shrikes left to seek out their next adventures.
