Fiscal Shrike

Gregor Woods’ Gallery piece ‘The Hapless Hangman’ (Nov/dec 2020) prompted a reader from the Western Cape to respond. Roelf Jacobs wrote that he grew up on a small farm just outside Kempton Park, living there from 1947 to 1964.

Roelf says quite a few fiscal shrikes frequented the area and the locals called it by the Afrikaans name, Laksman. Most of the fences on the farm were barbed wire and he often found impaled insects or small frogs on the barbs. On the odd occasion he found small birds impaled, probably taken by shrikes from the nests of other birds.

“We once caught a shrike and made the mistake of putting him into an aviary where my mom kept her budgies. A few hours later it had killed four of my mom’s budgies and we had to get him out of there pretty quick.”

The rule on the farm was that they were not allowed to shoot shrike, mainly because these birds did no damage to crops and they helped get rid of some pests.

Roelf now lives on a small farm near Stilbaai and reports that he’s not spotted any shrike on the property, however, the Southern Boubou (Suidelike Waterfiskaal), which looks a bit like a fiscal shrike, is present. This bird makes the most beautiful noise, especially early in the morning, Roelf says.

During 2013 I was lucky enough to witness a shrike killing a house sparrow in my garden. I was taking photographs of butterflies when the sparrow landed on a branch of a sweet thorn tree about 10m from my position. A shrike swooped down and bit it on the neck. I was too slow to take a photograph of the action but managed to get in a shot when the shrike landed next to its stricken prey and proceeded to administer a (needless) coup de grâce (see the accompanying photo). The shrike then tried to lift the sparrow and fly off, but did not succeed, the full-grown sparrow was probably too heavy.