Shrike

As I was getting ready to pull into my driveway I noticed what I thought was a mockingbird standing in the road. He was practically on top something that appeared to be a dead or dying sparrow.

At first I thought it must be that a sparrow had been killed or injured by a passing car or a neighborhood cat and that the mockingbird was just checking it out.

I parked the car and decided to walk down the driveway and see if there was anything to be done and when I got back to the street both birds were gone.

I’d never heard of a Mockingbird carrying off another bird and found the whole thing to be quite strange. Perhaps the sparrow was actually a baby mockingbird that had fallen from it’s nest or maybe it was a sparrow and it wasn’t injured that badly after all and it flew away.

None of that seemed right as that Sparrow looked to be in very rough shape.

I decided to go online and search on the term : Mocking bird kill other bird and was immediately presented with dozens of sites relating to “To Kill a Mockingbird” so I had to refine my search. I went with “Mocking bird kill other bird -“to kill”” and found a site called Bird Watcher’s General Store which had an article about The Shrike aka “The Butcher Bird”

As you can see, it looks a lot like a Mockingbird.

The Shrike is not called “The Butcher Bird” for no reason. Apparently it’s a fierce hunter and it not only kills for food now, it kills and stores it’s prey for later consumtion. It’s a grey-winged killing machine.

After some more research I determined that what I had seen was a Loggerhead Shrike right after making a kill.

I’ll have to keep a closer eye on the bird population and see if I can spot him again.