The Lookout Shrike Or Butcher Bird Art

by Reid Callaway

Title

The Lookout Shrike Or Butcher Bird Art

Artist

Reid Callaway

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Butcher Bird....by Reid Callaway Art
Shrike Bird Art
Greene County Georgia

This Shrike is looking for prey. Shrikes are known for their habit of catching insects and small vertebrates and impaling their bodies on thorns, the spikes on barbed-wire fences or any available sharp point. This helps them to tear the flesh into smaller, more conveniently-sized fragments, and serves as a cache so that the shrike can return to the uneaten portions at a later time. This same behavior of impaling insects serves as an adaptation to eating the toxic lubber grasshopper, Romalea guttata. The bird waits for 1-2 days for the toxins within the grasshopper to degrade, and then can eat it.

Shrikes are territorial, and these territories are defended from other pairs. In migratory species a breeding territory is defended in the breeding grounds and a smaller feeding territory is established during migration and in the wintering grounds. Where several species of shrike exist together competition for territories can be intense.

Shrikes make regular use of exposed perch sites, where they adopt a conspicuous upright stance. These sites are used in order to watch for prey items and to advertise their presence to rivals

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Uploaded

June 22nd, 2013

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