Beware the Butcher Bird!

In recent weeks, our region has seen an incursion of the notorious "butcher bird" — the

 northern shrike .

Shrikes are often said to be the only "songbirds of prey." While any bird that eats live animals, including fish, insects, and worms, could legitimately be considered a predator, shrikes are distinct among songbirds in hunting like small raptors and counting small birds and rodents (as well as large insects) among their victims. The northern shrike in particular has a sharp hook at the end of its beak like a hawk’s, used for tearing into its prey.

Even more uniquely, shrikes habitually impale their prey on sharp twigs, thorns, or barbed wire, which is how they get their nickname, "butcher birds." An individual shrike usually has a "larder," a collection of three or four impaled animals in various states of dismemberment, to which it returns on-and-off to feed. In addition to being a convenient system of food storage, it is thought that this behavior also functions as a kind of mating display, with a male’s well-stocked larder being an inducement to an unattached female (yum!).

The northern shrike is the same size as a

 northern mockingbird and bears a striking resemblance to that species in plumage. Since mockingbirds do winter here in small numbers, they are a potential source of confusion.

Both species are gray overall, have a fairly long, dark tail, and blackish wings with prominent white patches on them. Both have a dark patch running through the eye, but the shrike’s is much blacker and gives the bird a truly masked appearance. The shrike perches — often on fence posts and utility wires — in a more upright position than does the mockingbird and, as befits a bird of its habits, has a proportionally larger head and thicker, more powerful-looking bill.

Finally, you wouldn’t see a mockingbird out hunting, but you might see a shrike carrying a mockingbird to its larder!

Like many other birds of prey, shrikes require large patches of open ground for hunting their prey. Recent sightings in our area have come from places in Goshen and North Canaan with extensive open fields.

The northern shrike has a worldwide, circumpolar distribution. It breeds just below the Arctic Circle and then moves southward in winter. Like other species I’ve talked about in this space recently, it tends to be more numerous here in winter in some years than others, a likely response to vagaries in food availability.

The slightly smaller

 loggerhead shrike is exclusive to North America, and its range is south of our area. Sightings of that species would be possible, but very unusual and noteworthy. Even appearances of the northern shrike are worth writing about, and it’s definitely a bird worth looking for.

Fred Baumgarten is a naturalist and writer. He can be reached at fredb58@sbcglobal.net. His blog is at thatbirdblog.blogspot.com.