Bird of the Week (Hallowe’en Edition) – Northern Shrike

It’s Hallowe’en, so we might as well have a masked bird, a “bad” bird, as our bird of the week. It’s a little scarier than your basic flycatcher. The Northern Shrike is a songbird that’s gone to the Dark Side. A predator, it has evolved that wicked hooked bill and carnivorous habits. This species is a determined pursuer of small birds and mammals, which it somewhat gruesomely impales on thorns and barbed-wire or wedges in forks of branchlets. Its nickname is “the butcher bird.” Its Latin name, Lanius excubitor, means “butcher watchman,” an appropriate name for this capable and alert predator. WC and…