Loggerhead shrike, the songbird with a hooked bill

The loggerhead shrike is a songbird, a very efficient predator and slightly smaller than a robin. If you have bird feeders, then your chances of viewing one of these increases significantly. The loggerhead shrike is a songbird with a raptor’s habits. Found in grasslands and other open habitats throughout much of North America, this predator hunts from utility poles, fence posts, and other conspicuous perches, preying on insects, birds, lizards, and small mammals. Lacking a raptor’s talons, loggerhead shrikes skewer their kills on thorns or barbed wire or wedge them into tight places for easy eating.

Loggerhead shrikes are thick-bodied songbirds. They have a large, blocky head and a thick bill with a small hook. The tail is fairly long and rounded. The loggerhead shrike is a gray bird with a black mask and white flashes in the black wings. The gray head contrasts with the wide black mask, black bill, and white throat. The tail is black with white corners; the wings are black with white at the base of the primaries that form a small “handkerchief” spot when the wing is closed and larger white patches in flight. Juveniles have darker barring above and below. 

If you live in Boundary County you have a very good chance of spotting one of these birds. They sit on low, exposed perches and scan for rodents, birds, and insects. They eat smaller prey (such as ground beetles) right away, but they are famous for impaling larger prey on thorns or barbed wire to be eaten later. The species often hovers. When flying, it uses bursts of very rapid wing beats. Open country with scattered shrubs and trees is their typical habitat, but the loggerhead shrike can also be found in more heavily wooded habitats with large openings and in very short habitats with few or no trees.

Loggerhead shrikes eat insects and other arthropods, amphibians, small mammals, and birds; they also sometimes feed on road kill and carrion. Their staple foods include grasshoppers, beetles, and rodents. Insects generally dominate the loggerhead shrike’s diet during breeding season and summer. In fall and winter, they have a greater reliance on vertebrate prey. These include lizards, snakes, frogs, turtles, sparrows, goldfinches, ground squirrels, voles, and mice to name just a few.

Both the male and female gather nesting material. The female usually constructs the nest on her own over a period of about 6–11 days. The bulky, well-insulated open cup is neatly woven of rootlets, twigs, and bark strips and lined inside with soft material such as flowers, lichen, grass, moss, feathers, fur, string, or cloth. The nest is about six inches in diameter on the outside, with an interior diameter of about four inches; the cup is about three inches deep. Eggs are grayish buff, marked with gray to yellowish-brown, and the clutch size is usually five to six.

A loggerhead shrike can kill and carry an animal as massive as itself. It transports large prey in its feet and smaller victims in its beak. The upper cutting edge of the loggerhead shrike’s hooked bill features a pair of built-in pointy projections, aptly named “tomial teeth.” Like a falcon, the shrike tackles vertebrate prey with a precise attack to the back of the neck, using these tomial “teeth” to paralyze the animal with a jab to the spinal cord.

The longest-lived loggerhead shrike on record, a male, was at least 11 years, and 9 months old.

A special thanks to Jon Kerby for the use of his loggerhead shrikes’ images.