LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE
(Lanius lidovicianus)
eBird describes the Loggerhead Shrike this way: Gray-bodied, black-masked bandit of open areas, both rural and suburban. Power lines and tops of bushes offer the perfect perches for shrikes to spot their prey. Carnivorous habits make shrikes unique among passerines. In flight, watch for white patches in the wings. Feeds on large insects, rodents and small birds. About the size of a robin. All About Birds adds this descriptive information: The Loggerhead Shrike is a songbird with a raptor’s habits. A denizen of grasslands and other open habitats throughout much of North America, this masked black, white, and gray predator hunts from utility poles, fence posts and other conspicuous perches, preying on insects, birds, lizards, and small mammals. Lacking a raptor’s talons, Loggerhead Shrikes skewer their kills on thorns or barbed wire or wedge them into tight places for easy eating. Their numbers have dropped sharply in the last half-century.
I saw my first Loggerhead Shrike in the Fort Brown area of Brownsville, Texas on the evening of June 21, 2020. It was a solitary bird that I happened to take a couple of photos of (in bad light) and was able to identify when I got home.
Toward the end of the Summer, I began to see the Loggerhead Shrike with some regularity. I first saw this bird at Warbler Woods near the end of September. Then the second week of October, I saw the Loggerhead Shrike on Lakeview Trail and County Line Road.
“Cool Facts” about the Loggerhead Shrike from All About Birds…
- A Loggerhead Shrike can kill and carry an animal as massive as itself. It transports large prey in its feet and smaller victims in its beak.
- The upper cutting edge (tomium) of the Loggerhead Shrike’s hooked bill features a pair of built-in pointy projections, aptly named “tomial teeth.” Like a falcon, the shrike tackles vertebrate prey with a precise attack to the nape, probably using these tomial “teeth” to paralyze the animal with a jab to the spinal cord.
- Loggerhead Shrikes impale noxious prey such as monarch butterflies and eastern narrow-mouthed toads—then wait for up to three days to eat them, which allows time for the poisons to break down. These shrikes also eat the heads and abdomens of toxic lubber grasshoppers, while discarding the insect’s poisonous thorax.
- Newly fledged Loggerhead Shrikes perform exaggerated, misdirected versions of adult hunting behavior. They peck at inanimate objects, fly about with leaves or sticks in their beaks, practice aerial chases without a target, or chase after their parents. They also perform rudimentary impaling gestures, grasping objects in the tip of their bill and repeatedly touching them to a branch or perch as if trying to get them to stick.
- Loggerhead Shrikes sometimes go hunting on cold mornings, when insect prey are immobilized by low temperatures.
- “Loggerhead,” a synonym for “blockhead,” refers to the unusually large size of this bird’s head in relation to its body.
- The longest-lived Loggerhead Shrike on record—a male—was at least 11 years, 9 months old when it was caught and released in 2010 by researchers in California.