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"Butcher Birds" Now Making Rare (and Possibly Grisly) Area Appearances

Mark Faherty

Keep an eye out for the butcher birds. There have been several sightings this winter of one of my favorite birds of all time, the Northern Shrike, including two spotted at Nauset Beach in Orleans within the last week.

I’m a typical guy birder in that I love the predatory birds. And pound for pound, there is no more formidable avian predator than a shrike.
 
They’re known as butcher birds for a reason, and it’s sort of a grisly one. Despite being small songbirds, looking sort of like a mockingbird in a bandit’s mask, shrikes prey on small mammals and birds up to the size of a Mourning Dove or a Blue Jay. And when they want to save some food for later, they have a habit of impaling their prey on thorns or even barbed wire fences. In Arctic areas where there are no thorns, they just wedge their prey into the forks of branches. It’s not uncommon for a Northern Shrike to have a dozen small mammals or birds stored in this way, in what is known as a larder.
 
The old ornithology literature is full of accounts of their “wanton killing”, where they kill more than they can eat at one time. These stories tell of shrike who end up in some barn and kill all of the mice or sparrows inside before leaving. Wanton killing sounds a bit judgy to this ornithologist – storing food for later seems nothing more than prudent when you are trying to survive the winter in Arctic Canada and can never be sure of a future meal. And it’s not like our species has a great track record of restraint when it comes to killing – just ask the American Bison or the Passenger Pigeon. But I digress.
 
Northern Shrikes have a Holarctic distribution, meaning they occur in both the New World and Old World Arctic, though in Eurasia they are known as the Great Grey Shrike. They are not common anywhere, and are unpredictable and rare winter visitors to this area. Since scarcity creates value in the economics of birding, a shrike sighting always makes a birder’s day. Look for them perched atop a bare tree in open areas, though it seems like I have seen them just as often in suburban neighborhoods. There is no one place I can think of where they have occurred regularly, with the possible exception of High Head in North Truro, which has hosted over a dozen in the last 10 years. On the North Shore, Plum Island in Newburyport is by far the best place in the state to find these deadly little songbirds of winter.
 
It wouldn’t be Christmas bird count season if I didn’t talk about at least one count, and there is a local count I haven’t yet mentioned - the sea-bound Stellwagen Bank Count. This count, as you might expect, is conducted only from a boat, though the count circle used to clip a portion of Provincetown before it was moved several years ago. Now the count is strictly marine, and is run by Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, functioning as one of their regular seabird surveys.
 
Ten hardy souls conducted this count on the 20th, and while the overall species total is puny compared with land based counts, the highlights were enviable. Four Atlantic Puffins were tallied, along with several dozen Common Murres. These two species are the hardest to find of the alcids, those flying footballs of winter I have talked about before. Both favor deep water, keeping them well out of sight of land most of the time.
 
I have three back to back Christmas counts to do this week, so at the time you are hearing this, I am definitely out in my natural habitat birding. Come to think of it, why aren’t you?

Mark Faherty writes the Weekly Bird Report.