{"id":452,"date":"2010-09-03T16:10:51","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T22:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.wordpress.com\/?p=452"},"modified":"2011-05-29T07:43:12","modified_gmt":"2011-05-29T13:43:12","slug":"loggerhead-shrike-impaling-prey-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/03\/loggerhead-shrike-impaling-prey-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Loggerhead Shrike Impaling Prey, revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Recently on this blog I posted images of a juvenile Loggerhead Shrike impaling a dragonfly on thorns and said I hoped to get more documentation of the behavior but it would likely have\u00a0to wait until next years nesting season.\u00a0 I was wrong.\u00a0 I witnessed and photographed this behavior again just three days ago.\u00a0 This time the shrike was also a juvenile but the prey was a large spider.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

Juvenile shrike with spider<\/em><\/p>\n

What happened after the capture was interesting for me.\u00a0 The bird didn’t simply impale the prey and leave it\u00a0(as a cache or food store)\u00a0\u00a0as might be expected of an adult.\u00a0 Instead, it attempted to impale the spider on different\u00a0thorns multiple times, like it was practicing – learning how to do it (keep in mind, the bird is a juvenile).\u00a0 In fact, at one point the shrike even seemed to be “studying” its work, as you will see (I’m sure that’s anthropomorphic of me).\u00a0 Sometimes they don’t actually impale the prey, instead they wedge it into crevices or between forked branches\/twigs.\u00a0 This shrike tried to\u00a0do\u00a0both with the spider.\u00a0 After what I believe was four attempts at impaling\/wedging the spider on some thorny branches someone had placed in a campground fire pit, the bird had apparently had enough practice and simply ate the prey in several pieces.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some of the \u00a0images below aren’t of the best quality but I think they do document what I saw.\u00a0 As far as I could tell, the spider was dead through this whole process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

Attempting to impale spider on thorn directly under bird’s bill<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Seeking out a different thorn in another area (the one directly\u00a0to the left of the spider)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Attempting to impale, again<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Here the shrike has let go of the spider, apparently to see if it will stay put.\u00a0 Notice that one leg is hooked over the thorn<\/em><\/p>\n

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Because of the one hooked leg, the spider hangs there for a moment…<\/p>\n

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And then falls to the ground, which the shrike obviously notices\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The shrike retrieves the spider and tries again near where it tried the first time<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Here it almost appears as if\u00a0the bird is studying\u00a0its work, with its bill resting on the branch<\/p>\n

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And finally the shrike simply eats the spider, in several pieces\u00a0<\/p>\n

I suspect that the impaling behavior is instinctual but must be practiced repeatedly to get it right.\u00a0 Three times now I’ve seen juvenile Loggerhead Shrikes practice impaling behavior multiple times and then eat their prey immediately.\u00a0 It seems logical to me that they were simply trying to learn and become more skilled at doing it.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Recently on this blog I posted images of a juvenile Loggerhead Shrike impaling a dragonfly on thorns and said I hoped to get more documentation of the behavior but it would likely have\u00a0to wait until next years nesting season.\u00a0 I was wrong.\u00a0 I witnessed and photographed this behavior again just three days ago.\u00a0 This time the shrike was also a juvenile but the prey was a large spider.\u00a0 \u00a0 Juvenile shrike with spider What happened after the capture was interesting for me.\u00a0 The bird didn’t simply impale the prey and leave it\u00a0(as a cache or food store)\u00a0\u00a0as might be expected of an adult.\u00a0 Instead, it attempted to impale the spider on different\u00a0thorns multiple times, like it was practicing – learning how to do it (keep in mind, the bird is a juvenile).\u00a0 In fact, at one point the shrike even seemed to be “studying” its work, as you will see (I’m sure that’s anthropomorphic of me).\u00a0 Sometimes they don’t actually impale the prey, instead they wedge it into crevices or between forked branches\/twigs.\u00a0 This shrike tried to\u00a0do\u00a0both with the spider.\u00a0 After what I believe was four attempts at impaling\/wedging the spider on some thorny branches someone had placed in a campground fire pit, the bird had apparently had enough practice and simply ate the prey in several pieces.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some of the \u00a0images below aren’t of the best quality but I think they do document what I saw.\u00a0 As far as I could tell, the spider was dead through this whole process.\u00a0 \u00a0 Attempting to impale…<\/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":[182,183,198,206,256,281,292],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-impaling","tag-instinct","tag-learning","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-prey","tag-shrike","tag-spider"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","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=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}