The same shrike after eating the vole, with\u00a0 evidence of its messy meal on its face<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nI’m hoping to get more documentation of this fascinating behavior in the future but it will probably have to wait until next year because most of these birds have now dispersed after the nesting season and they’re much more difficult to find and approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ron\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Shrikes have been called “butcher birds” for their habit of impaling their prey (insects, small rodents,\u00a0reptiles\u00a0or birds) on thorns, barbed wire or other sharp projections.\u00a0\u00a0 They do it for several reasons.\u00a0 It helps them to tear\u00a0 the flesh into bite sized pieces, they use it as a method of caching (storing) their food and it helps them to survive eating the toxic lubber grasshopper because the toxins within the insect degrade to harmless substances within a couple of days.\u00a0 \u00a0I had never seen or photographed this behavior, or evidence of it, \u00a0until this summer when I did both several times.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the first\u00a0 three photos below, this juvenile Loggerhead Shrike\u00a0is practicing this instinctive behavior but the bird apparently\u00a0isn’t very skilled at it yet as it had some difficulty impaling the dragonfly on the short\u00a0thorn just below the insect.\u00a0 In the first image the bird seems to be trying to decide which of several thorns to use for this grisly\u00a0task.\u00a0 \u00a0 Preparing to impale the dragonfly\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Impaling the dragonfly on a thorn\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The dragonfly has been impaled, though a little off-center.\u00a0\u00a0 In this case the bird didn’t wait long to begin eating the prey.\u00a0 Here it has torn off the head and the\u00a0front part of the abdomen with one pair of wings attached and is swallowing them.\u00a0 As you can see, the rest of the insect is still impaled on the thorn.\u00a0 \u00a0Soon after this shot was taken the shrike removed the rest of the dragonfly from the thorn, flew with…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[392,346],"tags":[36,50,63,182,190,206,312,315],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-avian-2","tag-behavior","tag-butcher-bird","tag-impaling","tag-juvenile","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-utah-bird-photography","tag-vole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131520,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/131520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/northern-shrike-88341.jpg\" "\\"northern-shrike-8834\\"")
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