<< Back 11/13/02 The Naturalist's Corner By Don Hendershot Traveling the farmlands and coastal plains of south Texas below Houston this past weekend, I was reacquainted with the “French Mocking Bird.” They were common on power lines, fence posts and the tops of scrub oaks and other shrubs. Where the name French Mocking Bird came from, I don’t know, but that was one of the common names for the loggerhead shrike throughout Louisiana and much of the Southeast. It was one of the shrike’s habits that first piqued my interest. Roaming the farmlands of northeast Louisiana in my youth, I would invariably come upon the unfortunate skink, lizard or grasshopper impaled upon a thorn or barbed wire fence. A little research led me to the perpetrator of this ritualistic display, the “butcher bird,” another name for the loggerhead shrike. The hanging of prey on thorns and such reminded some of the way butchers would hang meat on hooks. Biologists believe there are two main reasons for this behavior. The shrike is a songbird with the heart of a raptor. It preys on almost anything smaller than itself including lizards, snakes, rodents, insects and other birds. The shrike has a hooked beak like hawks and other raptors, but is missing talons. The thorn or barb serves to hold the butcher bird’s prey in place while it dines. The practice also serves as an advertisement for a mate. A male that has a lot of prey hanging around would probably make a good provider. The loggerhead shrike was once common across most of the U.S. and Canada. A combination of factors has led to a steady decline over recent years. Habitat destruction is, of course, a major factor. Flat, open prairie, grasslands and coastal plains are ideal building sites. Agricultural pesticides pose threats, both directly to the bird itself and indirectly by killing insects the shrike would prey on. Another agricultural trend, clean farming, has also diminished habitat. Fencerows have become a thing of the past in most farming operations. The loggerhead shrike is federally listed as a Migratory Nongame bird of Management Concern. It is listed as endangered and/or threatened in parts of Canada. It is state listed as threatened or endangered in 14 states. It is a bird of special concern in North Carolina. The shrike is wide-ranging. It occurs from Canada to Mexico and from California to Florida. There are two main subspecies of shrikes in North America. One is a migrant, Lanius ludovicianus migrans and the other, more common, subspecies; L. l. ludovicianus is a resident. The resident shrike ranges in the east from Virginia and North Carolina south to Florida and west to Louisiana. L. l. ludovicianus is a resident in North Carolina from the piedmont to the coastal plains but is absent from much of the northeastern coastal plain. Migrants are said to reach Western North Carolina along the Appalachians, but it is quite rare. The loggerhead shrike is a strikingly patterned gray, black and white bird, about the size of a robin. It, somewhat, suggests a mocking bird, but it is a chunkier bird with a large head. The shrike’s back is gray, the wings are black and white, the chest and belly are white, the tail is black with white along the sides and it has a black mask. The mask gives the shrike a hooded look, at a distance. The loggerhead shrike has a very similar northern cousin, the northern shrike. The northern shrike is just a bit larger and because of this, does not look as big-headed as the loggerhead shrike. The northern shrike also has longer wings and tail than the loggerhead and its mask is thinner and does not extend across the forehead. At this time strongholds like south Texas, Louisiana and Florida probably mean extinction is not near for the loggerhead shrike, but if habitat continues to disappear at the rate it is now all that could change in the near future. (Don Hendershot can be reached at don@smokymountainnews.com)