{"id":103468,"date":"2021-10-19T05:24:54","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T11:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=103468"},"modified":"2021-10-19T06:43:11","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T12:43:11","slug":"loggerhead-shrike-attempting-learning-to-impale-a-grasshopper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/19\/loggerhead-shrike-attempting-learning-to-impale-a-grasshopper\/","title":{"rendered":"Loggerhead Shrike Attempting (Learning?) To Impale A Grasshopper"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure if this shrike was learning the impaling process or practicing it. If it was for practice he needed it.<\/p>\n

A week ago I posted photos of a Loggerhead Shrike pulling a chunk of flesh off of an impaled vole<\/a><\/span><\/span>, which reminded me of a post I published back in 2012 of another shrike attempting to impale a grasshopper on a barbed wire fence. Very few current blog followers have seen that post so I decided to publish it again. For this version I’ve rewritten much of the text, tweaked the formatting and changed the title.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Loggerhead Shrikes, sometimes called “butcher birds” for good reason, often impale their prey on sharp projections to store it in their “larder” and\/or give them the leverage they need to pull chunks of the prey off just prior to swallowing. In the summer of 2012, on a visit to the family farm in northwest Montana, I found a Loggerhead Shrike with a grasshopper in ‘his’ bill on a barbed wire fence right in front of the farmhouse I grew up in. Or at least where it used to be.<\/p>\n

The following photos document his attempt to impale the grasshopper on one of the barbs of the barbed wire. The shrike was strongly side lit, the light was harsh and I seldom got a catch light in his eye but the photos document the behavior well. Some of the photos are a little dark but I didn’t have time to reprocess them.<\/p>\n

Impaling behavior is apparently innate in shrikes but it still takes practice, lots of practice, in order to do it well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

Immediately after approaching the shrike it became obvious that he was going to attempt to impale the grasshopper on the barb just below and in front of his face.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

But the barb was at an awkward angle where the rounded fence rail dropped off steeply so he had a devil of a time getting it done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

Because he had to get the grasshopper impaled and keep from falling off the fence rail at the same time the body contortions required were…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

perhaps the most unusual I’ve ever photographed in a bird.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

Applying enough force on the grasshopper in one direction to get it pulled onto the barb kept pulling the shrike further down the steep slope of the fence rail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

At one point he very nearly fell off the fence. And the grasshopper still wasn’t impaled on the barb..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

After a while he appeared to give up. He turned his back to me with the grasshopper between his legs and a gob of grasshopper guts on his bill and seemed to contemplate what to do next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

Once his decision was made he just ate the darned thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

And he did it with gusto.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

He was rewarded when he found dessert laying on the fence behind the square post – a leftover leg.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

The silly bird tried to impale the leg on the same barb as before but of course it didn’t work. The leg was just too small for the barb. I can’t remember if he swallowed or dropped the leg.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/p>\n

When it was all over he performed one hop and took off, with the grasshopper guts still on his bill..<\/p>\n

Impaling prey is a complex behavior and an inexact science so I suspect the learning process goes on for the life of the bird. And that’s a good thing for me because I love photographing the behavior.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure if this shrike was learning the impaling process or practicing it. If it was for practice he needed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,361,392,346],"tags":[63,824,2135,409,206,220,5982],"class_list":["post-103468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-family-farm-in-northwest-montana","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-butcher-bird","tag-grasshopper","tag-impaling-prey","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-montana-2","tag-practice-or-learning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/loggerhead-shrike-3068-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qUQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103468"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103498,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103468\/revisions\/103498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}