Hunting: The northern shrike is a species of song bird or passerine, closely related to blue jays and crows. Despite this, shrikes are predators although do not hunt like many raptors which hunt using their talons. Instead, they catch their prey using their hooked break and paralyze it by piercing the spinal cord. They then start thrashing the paralyzed animal, breaking its neck and effectively killing it. The corpse is soon impaled on the spines of certain trees such as hawthorn which can have thorns up to 5cm long (2in). Once impaled; they’re better able to tear into their prey and will even stockpile uneaten food on these thorns. This way, they will always have access to food, even when resources become scarce. Shrikes will feed on an indiscriminate array of wildlife such as small mammals, lizards, snakes, insects and even other birds with reports of chickadees and northern cardinals falling prey to these “butcher birds”
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Sources:
"Hawthorn." Macphail Woods Ecological Forest Project, 2012, macphailwoods.org/nature-guides/shrubs/hawthorne/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2022. Waters, Hannah. "Shrikes Have an Absolutely Brutal Way of Killing Large Prey." Audubon Society, 6 Sept. 2018, www.audubon.org/news/shrikes-have-absolutely-brutal-way-killing-large-prey. Accessed 2 Feb. 2022. |