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Project Noah Nature School
Lanius ludovicianus
Near a wetland: Celery Fields
Often called the Butcher bird because of the way it impales & hangs it's meat (caterpillar) on barbed wire spikes.
Spotted on Oct 9, 2011
Submitted on Oct 9, 2011
14 Comments
Wonderful !!
Congratulations, Claire! Your beautiful shrike was featured in my Project Noah blog post, "It's Life - unique abilities for unique organisms" today!
http://blog.projectnoah.org/post/4414706...
In the new movie, "The Big Year" they say shrikes mimic bird calls to call in other species, kill them and impale them on thorns. Does anyone know this to be true?
Yes...I was just going over to take it's pic on the fence when I discovered the caterpillar hanging there. He then plucked it off and started eating it and generally just messing with it...flew to another post with it that was further away from me, though I wasn't very close. I've seen one impale a dragonfly too.
Fantastic shot! I've heard that shrikes do that, but never actually seen them in action.
Thanks Harsha & Atul
fantastic series
Wow! Very nice.
Thanks Alice & Cindy. Smart & fierce looking!
Wow, smart bird! Great series, ceherzog!
Wonderful series Claire. I used to see a shrike a couple of years ago when I walked, but have not seen one for some time now.
No, ceherzog, I have never seen this before. Is definitely a tool and a very smart method of securing their catch. Thanks for sharing this....!
Thanks Thurd13...I had sooooo much fun watching this bird. Have you ever seen them impale their catch on barbed wire.? Wouldn't you say this is a form of using a tool? They're not all bird brains!
great series...!