{"id":23473,"date":"2014-04-25T05:45:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T11:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23473"},"modified":"2014-04-25T05:45:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T11:45:29","slug":"how-the-loggerhead-shrike-got-its-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/25\/how-the-loggerhead-shrike-got-its-name\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Loggerhead Shrike Got Its Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loggerhead Shrikes have several distinguishing characteristics including a mean-looking hooked beak and a black facial mask but it’s their very large head that gave them their common name.<\/p>\n

In the 16th century a “logger” was a large block of wood for hobbling a horse.\u00a0 The term loggerhead came to mean “blockhead” or something with a disproportionately large head.\u00a0\u00a0 Several disparate species were named for that characteristic including the Loggerhead Sea Turtle and Loggerhead\u00a0Sponges (huge sponges whose barrel shape resembles a head).<\/p>\n

I’ve long been aware of the unusually large head of the Loggerhead Shrike but yesterday morning one bird in particular drove that fact home for me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"loggerhead<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 400, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As soon as I had this bird in my viewfinder I was struck by the size of its head.\u00a0 In fact I remember saying out loud “This bird’s head is HUGE!”.\u00a0 Just as human head sizes vary (think of the variety of hat sizes), so must those of birds and other animals.\u00a0 To my eye this one appears massive compared to the average relative head size of most other birds and it also\u00a0seems noticeably larger than that of most other Loggerhead Shrikes\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s a figment of light or angle or my imagination.\u00a0 But I don’t think so…<\/p>\n

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

Loggerhead Shrikes have several distinguishing characteristics including a mean-looking hooked beak and a black facial mask but it’s their very large head that gave them their common name.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23474,"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":[3,5,334,346],"tags":[1982,1981,409,1983,206],"class_list":["post-23473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-black-mask","tag-hooked-beak","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead","tag-loggerhead-shrike"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/loggerhead-shrike-6885-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-66B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473","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=23473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}