Vlad the Impaler

Family Laniidae

Shrikes

We all have moments in our lives when we wonder "Am I doing what I am supposed to be doing?" or "I wonder if I could be something else, choose another career, make some life changes?" or perhaps "I know I could be good at this. How do I get started?"

I certainly have had many moments wondering if I am going in the right direction, making the right decisions, taking the correct steps.

At some point, though, I think we just have to go. Do so, or suffer a sort of paralysis where we overthink things and make no move, take no step.

Just be who you are. As the Nike commercials of the past had stated, "Just do it."

At some point in the past, a songbird whose song was a soft catbird-like mew, whistles, warbles and twitters came to be a predator. A predator not of insects exclusively, but of mice, bats, lizards, and even other birds.

This songbird.......The Shrike.

*These pictures circulated around the bird/ornithology world a while back. I did not get the photographer's name or affiliation. I did not take them*

Superficially, one might say the Shrike, specifically in our case the Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus), resembles a Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) on steroids. I don't know, perhaps it was also named in Jose Canseco's book. If so, I still put alot of blame on current(how is he still...) Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig for being a part of, and allowing others to be a part of, the self-ruin of the great game of baseball at its highest level. I'm becoming quite the minor-league fan these days.

NEVERTHELESS...

The Shrikes' physical characteristics are of raptor-like, carnivorous prey-capture design. The wings are broad. In combination with a long tail, it is built for speed and sharper maneuverability. A powerful hooked bill enables it to snap the necks of their prey and carry them off.

One morphological exception though: the Shrike is a songbird (shhhh, don't say anything to it), and has the legs and feet of a songbird.

Although it sometimes is able to carry small prey with its feet, the majority of the time it can not. It must impale the prey item on sharp objects to feed upon it, store it, and perhaps use it to mark territory.

The differences of shrikes compared to other birds has made their place within the passerine order (songbirds) a difficult one. In the past they had been placed between Starlings and Waxwings, a little more recently they have been placed in a position between Flycatchers and Vireos. There is no consensus.

What I particularly like about these two pictures is that the Loggerhead Shrike, a native sp. to North America, has killed and is feeding upon the gregarious, wide-spread, non-native sp., the House Sparrow(Passer domesticus).

Quickly on the recognizable House Sparrow. The one in the picture slightly less recognizable.

This bird is perhaps more closely associated with human activity than any other North American exotic species. Introduced to this continent in New York City back in 1851, the "Old English" House Sparrow is abundant year-round in cities, farms, and other human-transformed environments. It aggressively defends nest cavities, quite possibly to the detriment of native cavity nesting species such as wrens of the Troglodytes Genus, and Bluebirds (Sialia spp.) to name just a couple of examples.

Back to Shrikes..

The subspecies I'll be working with, the "San Clemente" Loggerhead Shrike (L. l. mearnsi), as touched upon in the previous posting, is an endangered subspecies that occurs only on San Clemente Island.

I certainly look forward to learning more of the Shrikes' lives in the next 6 months.

Be who you are; even if you know how to sing.

Good morning.

-mwyork