After a whole month, just as I got used to seeing them perched atop the yucca, the loggerhead shrikes have decided to move on. Needless to say, the backyard seems empty without them. And, except for a bluebird in West Virginia long, long ago, they have been the highlight of my amateur birding career.
(Okay, props also to the prairie chicken last year – it’s stay was short, but very entertaining.)
Shrikes are special. First, they are the only songbirds that behave like raptors. They have the same hooked beak as eagles, but they do not have talons.
As a result, they must force their prey to self-destruct, driving them into corners or places where the insect, rodent or reptile impales itself on a thorn or spiky branch. I think that’s why they like our yuccas.(Reportedly, they are also fond of using barbed wire to do the job.)
Doesn’t that count as using tools? Doesn’t it make them smarter than crows? Birds, in fact – I just learned this – don’t have particularly small brains for their body size and what’s more, they have more neurons than most mammals and that is the important part.
The shrike is named for the scream it makes diving to harry its prey – a little orthographical evolution of some sort there – but I can’t figure out why it does that. Unless the sound is some kind of avian stun-grenade, which maybe it is.
Our pair – they are monogamous and mate for life – may be regular backyard visitors, but no one around here seems to know. They may be refugees from the big fire, but more likely are from the Channel Islands off our coast, which has three kinds of loggerhead shrikes on three different islands.
Loggerhead shrikes are critically endangered but surprisingly the most successful restoration effort has been made on one of those islands by the US Navy. Wikipedia sums it up:
In 1977, the San Clemente loggerhead shrike was listed as endangered by the United States government, with an estimated population of 50. Between 1982 and 1999, the bird’s population was measured between 14 and 33 birds, bottoming out in January 1998.The removal of feral goats and sheep was completed in 1993.
In 1996, the Institute for Wildlife Studies conducted video research on the shrike for the Navy. In 1997, they were asked to come up with a strategy to raise the bird’s numbers. A $3 million per year breeding program was launched in 1999 and new policies were instituted to help the shrike. For example, snipers must aim around bird nests when practicing. Thanks to the program, the bird’s population reached 135 (captive and wild) specimens by 2004.[3] In 2013, an estimated 70 breeding pairs were alive in the wild.
I like the part about the snipers aiming ‘around”…
Here’s my favorite thing about loggerhead shrikes – if you asked countries to design a bird, they would be Japan’s entry. Pale gray, black stripe, white markings confined to the stripe. Simple, striking, utterly elegant. Like a kimono for a bird. I hope they come back.
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The second wave
Tags: covid-19
They warned us and they were right. Follow the rules or this thing will come back. So it’s flaring up all over and the numbers are spiking and everyone is pretty upset because we’re going to have to go through all the same stuff we’ve already been through and couldn’t wait to put behind us.
But we can do it and we can do it better and faster because now we know the drill. Wear a mask, wash your hands, stay six feet apart, avoid crowds. On the upside, it is summer and we can all be outside most of the time which will reduce the risk.
We must do it. For ourselves and for each other, but mostly for our children. Every rule you follow is not just for yourself, but for a new generation. If we cheat, it hurts them. Not just physically, but emotionally and intellectually. They need to feel safe as well as be safe and they need to go back to school because that’s where their friends are.
We have all known, even if we didn’t want admit it, that we were leaving our kids a world much worse than the one we grew up in. But no one predicted that it would change so fast or become a matter of life and death for both the young and the old.
You know what you have to do. Do it now. Don’t whine. Just do it.
Yeah, I’m pretty much just reminding myself.
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