Bird of the Week (Hallowe’en Edition) – Northern Shrike
It’s Hallowe’en, so we might as well have a masked bird, a “bad” bird, as our bird of the week. It’s a little scarier than your basic flycatcher.
Northern Shrike, Denali Highway
The Northern Shrike is a songbird that’s gone to the Dark Side. A predator, it has evolved that wicked hooked bill and carnivorous habits. This species is a determined pursuer of small birds and mammals, which it somewhat gruesomely impales on thorns and barbed-wire or wedges in forks of branchlets. Its nickname is “the butcher bird.” Its Latin name, Lanius excubitor, means “butcher watchman,” an appropriate name for this capable and alert predator.
WC and Mrs. WC watched a Northern Shrike hunt a Black-capped Chickadee in their yard one morning. The Shrike would move near where he thought the prey was hidden and then flick or flash his wings in an attempt to startle the prey into moving. The hunting went on for 20-30 minutes, ending when the Chickadee flew into a window and stunned itself. The Shrike was unable to see or find the stunned, motionless bird and finally gave up. Mrs. WC rescued and revived the Chickadee and sent it on its way.
Happy Hallowe’en!
Camera geek stuff: f13, 1/320, ISO200, -0.3ev.
For more bird photos, please visit Frozen Feather Images.
Every time Ben Carson opens his mouth,his feet and legs get shoved deeper and deeper …Carson has to be the biggest liar since the last wingnut opened his yap.
Obama the Great has apparently killed off the new KXL pipeline from Canada to Nebraska. Yippee!!
Yay!
Read an article in a leading sportman magazine a long time ago about collecting fish bait that shrikes had impaled on bobwire fences. Grasshoppers,rodents and lizards were used to catch fish, Leastways they didn’t pile on vegetation and fecal material like I hear some mama grizzlies are wont to do.
All birds are beautiful.
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=ugly+birds+of+africa&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002
What you think of this one,Zyx? 🙂
WC has to make an exception to this generally true statement for South America’s Hoatzin.
/WC
oh jeez… scary lil booger, ennit?