ON THE WILD SIDE
TODAY I’d like to talk about a favourite winter bird of mine, and one that may unlock a memory for people of a certain age.
Although an incredibly rare winter visitor, many Brits my age will be intimately familiar with the family, or the summer variant of it at least, from a scene in a children’s animated show.
Anyone remember The Animals of Farthing Wood from the early 90’s? Well if you do you may remember the shrike showing off what the shrike does best and scarring your fragile young mind.
The shrike in question was a red-backed, but ’tis the season, so I’d like to talk about the great grey shrike.
The great grey shrike is a black, white and grey bird with a long tail and could only really be mistaken for a really weird magpie.
They are very pretty birds, a solid black ‘robber mask’ around their eyes giving them away at close range, but from that distance you should also be able to see their beak.
Despite being a pretty songbird the size of a thrush or blackbird, they have a strong, hooked beak just like a bird of prey. The great grey shrike has a few interesting local names, including Butcher bird, white whiskey John, wierangle and murdering pie.
White whiskey John adds to the long tradition of giving human names to birds like Robin redbreast, Jenny Wren etc, it doesn’t refer to the drink, but rather to the way they move their tail like a whisk. But did you notice a theme with some of the other names?
And this is where the emotional trauma comes in. Great grey, and their cousins the red-backed shrikes, are voracious predators, so much so that other local birds will recognise them and attack them on sight the same way they would an owl or buzzard. In their summer homes on the continent they eat a lot of bugs and lizards, but over half of their diet, and most of it here, is made up of rodents.
They grab a helpless mouse or vole, and take it to the nearest large thorned bush or barbed wire fence, where they skewer the creature.
They may use this whole area as a larder, storing a grizzly array of impaled rodents.
If you still want to see this terrifying bird after that warning, I have a few hints...
There are only about 60 of them in the country at this time of year and they are usually seen on the coastal east, south with a few pockets far inland.
Unusually for winter birds, they are insanely territorial, so you’ll almost never see them together. They love open areas with a small amount of vegetation, where they sit on exposed perches like treetops or telegraph poles, and sometimes hover like a kestrel. Whether you are intrigued or not, I hope this helps.