Loggerhead Shrike in flight with nesting material!

In flight, loggerhead shrikes flash white wing and tail spots. Both birds also have prominent white wing patches that are visible in flight and a black band through the eye.

Look For With just a quick glance at a loggerhead shrike, you might mistake it for a mockingbird, as both birds are a blend of gray, black, and white. They eat smaller prey (such as ground beetles) right away, but they are famous for impaling larger items on thorns or barbed wire to be eaten later.

The species often hovers.

Loggerhead shrikes have thick bills with a small hook. Loggerhead Shrike snatches a Dragonfly! Shrikes behave like raptors, but lacking a raptor’s talons, shrikes catch their prey in their beaks and skewer them on a sharp thorn or barb or wedge them into tight spaces. A denizen of grasslands and other open habitats throughout much of North America, this masked black, white, and gray predator hunts from utility poles, fence posts and other conspicuous perches, preying on insects, birds, lizards, and small mammals.

A shrike’s flight can be fluttery or fast, rocket-like. There are two types of shrike in North America, the loggerhead shrike and the northern shrike.

mearnsi), which occurs only on San Clemente Island, California. A closer look reveals the shrike’s flesh-tearing bill (shaped like a falcon’s bill), black mask, and its overall big-headed appearance and compact shape—quite different from the lanky mockingbird. It brings together government agencies, academic collaborators, non-profit and other organizations in Canada and the United States.

Loggerhead Shrike about to pick up a discarded tissue that it will add to it's neat!

Nest: Placed in a dense (and often thorny) tree or shrub, usually 5-30' above the ground, occasionally higher, in a spot well hidden by foliage. Gray-bodied, black-masked bandit of open areas, both rural and suburban.

Its song is a rich, burry warble, underscoring its standing as our only truly predatory songbird.

Carnivorous habits make shrikes unique among passerines. The bill’s upper edge has pointy projections called tomial teeth for attacking prey.

Both species are remarkably similar: they’re about the size of a robin, with a dark, hooked bill, grey body, and black-and-white wings. In Canada, the eastern population of the loggerhead shrike is listed as endangered and the western population is listed as threatened. The Loggerhead Shrike is sparsely distributed throughout its breeding range; breeding densities are especially low in Minnesota (Figure 1). In flight, watch for white patches in the wings.

When flying it uses bursts of … Loggerhead shrikes have thick bills with a small hook. Loggerhead Shrike in flight with nesting meterial! Loggerhead Shrike in flight! Loggerhead Shrike Lanius ludovicianus In open terrain, this predatory songbird watches from a wire or other high perch, then pounces on its prey: often a large insect, sometimes a small bird or a rodent. An international alliance that works to keep common birds common and help species at risk through voluntary partnerships. That’s why the Loggerhead Shrike Working Group was established in at the 2013 meeting of Partners in Flight to facilitate international collaboration on Loggerhead Shrike conservation across North America. The bill’s upper edge has pointy projections called tomial teeth for attacking prey. Loggerhead Shrike in flight! Feeds on large insects, rodents and small birds. Loggerhead Shrike with a discarded tissue! The Loggerhead Shrike is a songbird with a raptor’s habits. Partners in Flight.