A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
shrike
A shrike is a songbird that hunts like a raptor without a raptor’s feet. It takes insects, lizards, small mammals, and other birds, kills with a hooked bill and a bite to the neck, and then impales the prey on a thorn, a barbed wire spike, or a forked twig, which lets it tear pieces off and also serves as a larder. A male’s cache is inspected by females and appears to work as a display.
Etymology
The English name is related to shriek, for the harsh call. The older and more evocative English name is butcherbird, which is a straight description of the larder, and the Latin genus name means, roughly, a butcher as well. Several European languages call it the nine-killer, on a folk belief that it takes nine victims before eating any of them.
Notes
The impaling has a practical function beyond storage. Some shrikes take toxic grasshoppers and leave them skewered for a day or two, by which time the toxin has broken down and the prey is edible. Loggerhead shrikes in North America have been recorded caching on barbed wire.