{"id":4548,"date":"2012-02-29T08:14:04","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T15:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=4548"},"modified":"2012-02-29T09:35:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T16:35:14","slug":"a-few-recent-loggerhead-shrikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/29\/a-few-recent-loggerhead-shrikes\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Recent Loggerhead Shrikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s always a few Loggerhead Shrikes that winter-over on Antelope Island and I find them to be fascinating subjects.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Their approachability is very unpredictable but occasionally they’ll allow me to get close, especially when it’s very cold in the mornings or if they’re about to hack up a pellet.\u00a0 These are images I was able to get in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n

***Note: <\/strong>The last image in this post is graphic.\u00a0 If your sensibilities might be offended by such a photo please stop scrolling before you get to the last (6th) image.<\/div>\n

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\"loggerhead-shrike-1261\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

This bird was practicing its springtime melodic repertoire a few weeks early (image taken on 2\/5\/12).\u00a0 It was a relatively warm, sunny morning and it was singing its little heart out (if you can call shrike calls “singing”).<\/p>\n

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\"loggerhead-shrike-4583\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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With their black masks these shrikes\u00a0always remind me of little bandits and they have an attitude to go along with that perception.\u00a0 They get their name from their unusually large head (loggerhead\u00a0means “block head”).<\/p>\n

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\u00a01\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

I like the\u00a0soft, even light\u00a0and the setting in this image even though the\u00a0twigs in front of the bird may not be ideal for\u00a0some.<\/p>\n

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\"loggerhead-shrike-6153\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I’m including this shot just for fun.\u00a0 I liked the fluffy, relaxed pose to go along with the yawn.<\/p>\n

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\"loggerhead-shrike-3156\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

These little “wannabe raptors” are fierce predators.\u00a0\u00a0 From my observations their diet on the island for most of the year consists largely of insects and spiders but they’re fully capable of\u00a0killing and eating\u00a0small birds and rodents.\u00a0\u00a0And since “bugs” are essentially unavailable in the winter months it’s my suspicion that a large part of their winter diet is the voles that are so readily available on the island.\u00a0 You can see the remnants of such a meal on the side of this birds bill.<\/p>\n

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\"vole-0240\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em><\/p>\n

That suspicion was at least partially confirmed recently when I found this vole wedged in a tree branch that is regularly used by one of the shrikes.\u00a0 I didn’t actually see the shrike with the vole but I’m quite confident that this is a shrike kill.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shrikes\u00a0don’t have strong feet or talons so they’re well-known\u00a0for impaling or wedging prey on thorns or branches so they can tear the food item apart.\u00a0 Their hooked bill with horny tomial projections (similar to those in falcons) is very efficient for that purpose.\u00a0 One can readily\u00a0see why these birds are sometimes called “butcher birds”.<\/p>\n

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

There’s always a few Loggerhead Shrikes that winter-over on Antelope Island and I find them to be fascinating subjects.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Their approachability is very unpredictable but occasionally they’ll allow me to get close, especially when it’s very cold in the mornings or if they’re about to hack up a pellet.\u00a0 These are images I was able to get in the last few weeks. ***Note: The last image in this post is graphic.\u00a0 If your sensibilities might be offended by such a photo please stop scrolling before you get to the last (6th) image.   \u00a01\/3200, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc This bird was practicing its springtime melodic repertoire a few weeks early (image taken on 2\/5\/12).\u00a0 It was a relatively warm, sunny morning and it was singing its little heart out (if you can call shrike calls “singing”).       \u00a01\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc With their black masks these shrikes\u00a0always remind me of little bandits and they have an attitude to go along with that perception.\u00a0 They get their name from their unusually large head (loggerhead\u00a0means “block head”).       \u00a01\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc I like the\u00a0soft, even light\u00a0and the setting in this image even though the\u00a0twigs in front of the bird may not be ideal for\u00a0some.       \u00a01\/640, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc \u00a0I’m including this shot just for fun.\u00a0 I liked the fluffy, relaxed pose to go along with the yawn.       \u00a01\/1250, f\/7.1, ISO 500, 500…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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":[4,334,392,346,345],"tags":[31,657,625,409,206,256,284,658,311,315,330],"class_list":["post-4548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-loggerhead-shrikes-shrikes-and-vireos","category-shrikes-and-vireos","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-hooked-bill","tag-impale","tag-lanius-ludovicianus","tag-loggerhead-shrike","tag-prey","tag-singing","tag-tomial-projection","tag-utah-2","tag-vole","tag-yawn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-1bm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548","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=4548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}