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Thread: Shrike Larder

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    Lifetime Member philperry's Avatar
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    Default Shrike Larder

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    While testing a new Canon EOS 7D I found a common fiscal with its food larder, a behaviour I had not managed to photograph before. The fiscal (a type of shrike or colloquially 'butcher bird') flew into a bush next to the corpse of a shrew that it has skewered onto a twig. The shrike then picked it up in its beak before swallowing it.

    Details: Canon EOS 400 f4 DO + 1.4x ; 1/500th f5.6 ISO 800, very overcast lighting. Approx 50% crop.

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    Nice observation Phil. As you may know, shrikes are perching birds in the order Passeriformes but small mammals and birds form a component of their diet. Shrikes do not do not have powerful, killing feet like raptors so resort to impaling their prey on thorn bushes or barbed wire, and consume then or later. As implied by the word "larder", shrikes sometimes cache their food for later consumption or to attract mates. Food cacheing is rare in birds as most species appear not to have the mental ability to remember where the caches are. Crows are really good cachers.

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    Lifetime Member philperry's Avatar
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    John
    Many thanks for your comments. Looking carefully at my photos, I think the shrike had already eaten the rear half of the shrew and then cached the front half. Interestingly it had not used a thorn bush but an alien guava bush which does not appear to have thorns. I am amazed it managed to use the guava twig to spike the shrew corpse. The area of the park I saw the shrike in did not have many thorn bushes so I guess the shrikes can improvise.

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