Wayman Galloway, age 11, of Atlanta, Georgia, for his question:
What kind of bird is the shrike?
In appearance, you might mistake the shrike for a kind of mockingbird. But his alias, the butcherbird, suggests that his character is very different from the sweet, shy mocker. Not only does he butcher his victims, but he may hang their bodies in his own private butcher shop.
The shrike, alias the butcherbird, has a strong bill that may remind you of an owl or a hawk. These birds of prey have taloned claws for grabbing and tearing their victims apart. The shrike has the dainty perching feet of a songbird. However, he is certainly a bird of prey and he makes up for his lack of talons by impaling his victims on thorns and spikes. He dines on grasshoppers and other insects, mice and birds smaller than himself. When food is plentiful, he stores a supply for the future. His private butcher shop is usually a prickly bush and the bodies of mice and small birds are hung; upon its thorns.
Since he cannot pounce and grab like an owl, the shrike has learned to become a skillful pursuer of small animals. He chases a small bird through the branches and bushes until his victim becomes weary and baffled. Then he impales the little fellow on a spike and uses his strong sharp bill as both knife and fork. True, it is not a pretty story. But this is the nature of the shrike. And, though he murders many small songbirds, he also does away with lots of mice and ratty rodents.
Our northern shrike is the size of a robin and marked with the gentle colors of the mockingbird. He is pale grey with darker tail and wing tips and his chest may be marked with wavy bands of darker grey. He is chunkier than the mocker and he has a wider, hooked bill. The shady character also wears a black, bandit type mask across his eyes.
The northern shrike migrates north and south with the seasons. We notice him more in the winter, perhaps because he preys on the chickadees, the sparrows and other small nonmigratory birds. The loggerhead shrike is more common in our Southern states. He is somewhat smaller than his cousin and less of a butcher. The bulk of his diet is insects, though he often keeps a thorny butcher shop hung with surplus mice.
Our shrikes prefer to build their nests in bushes and thorny hedges. They tear off twigs and shreds of bark, weave them to form a sturdy cup shaped nest and line it with grasses and soft plant fibers. The eggs are dull white, spotted with rashes of brown freckles. The shrikes, like most birds, are devoted parents. But they tend to be fiercer than most birds when the nest is threatened. The father shrike uses all his bloodthirsty butchering skills to attack any suspicious looking animal that may chance to wander near his home.
North America has only two of the world's 70 or so different shrikes. The butcherbirds of Australia are black or black and white. But their habits are similar to those of our native shrikes. Africa is the home of the one gaily colored shrike. Several birds of other families are called shrikes. The cuckoo shrike looks like a shrike, though he feeds almost entirely on caterpillars. The so called ant shrike of Central America: wears vivid, wide stripes of black and white. When hordes of the dreaded army ants march through the jungle, he uses his hooked bill to gather them up and devour them.