Loggerhead shrike a consummate hunter
One might think of this 9-inch-long bird with a 12-inch wingspan and snappy black mask as a typical songbird, but the loggerhead shrike has a bit of an edge. It is a consummate hunter. Loggerhead shrikes can be seen perching on roadside fence posts, dead tree limbs and other such hunting vantage points. Loggerhead is synonymous with blockhead, a reference to this bird’s large head. A loggerhead shrike can kill and carry an animal as big as itself. It moves large prey with its feet and smaller victims in its beak.
Note the hooked upper bill of this shrike. What you can’t see is that the upper cutting edge of the bill features a pair of built-in pointy projections, which make it easier to kill prey.
The loggerhead shrike possesses other specialized hunting techniques. They impale noxious prey like monarch butterflies with their super-effective beak and wait several days to eat them, which allows their poisons to break down. They also eat the nontoxic parts of the toxic lubber grasshopper and leave the poisonous bits behind.
Loggerhead shrikes sometimes go hunting on cold mornings when insect prey are immobilized by low temperatures. Most grisly of all perhaps is a technique necessitated by the fact that shrikes do not have talons to hold down prey. The loggerhead shrike is known for impaling larger prey on thorns or barbed wire, or wedging them into tight places for easy eating. Sometimes they will leave the carcass in place to feast upon later.
We get occasional reports of loggerhead shrike. All but the northern edge of New Mexico is within their year-round range, but these birds are not often seen for several reasons. They don’t stay in populated areas, preferring open country with scattered trees and shrubs. You are unlikely to see them in town, unless you live on the edges of the city with the right habitat. In other words, they hang out mostly where we are not. They do not come to bird feeders.
Their numbers are also declining. According to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, between 1966 and 2015, their numbers declined by 76 percent. The most recent State of the Birds Report lists them as a common bird in steep decline. The report says, “The species’ decline coincides with the introduction and increased use of chemical pesticides between the 1940s and the 1970s, and may result in part from the birds’ ingestion of pesticide-laced prey from treated fields. Other likely causes of population decline include collision with vehicles, urban development, conversion of hayfields and pastureland, decimation of hedgerows, habitat destruction by surface-coal strip mining and altering of prey populations by livestock grazing. Given this bird’s potentially high reproductive rate, and provided that adequate habitat continues to be available, loggerhead shrike populations may be able to recover if the causes of the bird’s decline can be identified and eliminated.”
It gives me great pause when I read about different birds’ populations and how human activity has such a dramatic effect on their survival.