Great Grey Shrikes breed right across the north-temperate and sub-arctic regions of North America and Eurasia. In Europe they breed from central France north to Fenno-Scandia and east to central Europe and north and central Russia.
    A small number of Geat Grey Shrikes from Fenno-Scandia winter in Britain in most years. In Wiltshire there was a scattering of records in the 19th century (including 16 records between 1837 and 1876) and in the first half of the 20th century. There were 30 Wiltshire records between 1946 and 1973 and records in all but three of the winters between 1974 and 2000. Birds of Wiltshire recorded them in ten 10km squares, half of which were on Salisbury Plain. Bird Atlas 2007-11 on the other hand recorded them in just five squares, only two of which were on the Plain.

References
The following references are used throughout these species accounts, in the abbreviated form given in quotation marks:
1968-72 Breeding Atlas” – Sharrack, J.T.R. 1976:  The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland. T. & A. Poyser
1981-84 Winter Atlas” – Lack, P.C. 1986:  The Atlas of Wintering Birds in Britain and Ireland. T. & A. Poyser
“1988-91 Breeding Atlas” – Gibbons, D.W., Reid, J.B. & Chapman, R.A. 1993: The New Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland 1988-91. T. & A. Poyser
“Birds of Wiltshire” – Ferguson-Lees, I.J. et al. 2007 : Birds of Wiltshire, published by the tetrad atlas group of the Wiltshire Ornithological Society after mapping fieldwork 1995-2000. Wiltshire Ornithological Society.
Bird Atlas 2007-2011” – Balmer, D.E., Gillings, S., Caffrey, B.J., Swann, R.L., Downie, I.S. and Fuller, R.J. 2013: Bird Atlas 2007-2011: the Breeding and Wintering Birds of Britain and Ireland
WTA2” – ("Wiltshire Tetrad Atlas 2 ") the present electronic publication, bringing together the Wiltshire data from “Birds of Wiltshire” and “Bird Atlas 2007-11”, together with data from further fieldwork carried out in 2011 and 2012.
"Hobby" - the annual bird report of the Wiltshire Ornithological Society.