Northern Shrike (Lanius excubitor)

County List:

Rule:

Mixed Forested/Nonforested or Nonforested Landscapes

      Grass
      or Upland Brush
      or Fields/Pastures
      or Savanna
   containing:
      Perches

Habitat List:

view size class definitions

Literature:

Habitat: The Loggerhead Shrike is a bird of open country, utilizing a wide variety of habitats that offer short vegetation, such as pastures with fencerows, old orchards, mowed roadsides, cemeteries, golf courses, and agricultural fields. Loggerhead Shrikes require perches from which to search for prey, including insects, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and small birds. Territories frequently border rural roads where utility lines are used as perches.

Loggerhead Shrikes nest in a variety of trees and shrubs, but seem to prefer short ones with a tangle of protective branches or thorns, such as hawthorn, apple, wild crabapple, and eastern red cedar.

Although shrikes seem to have declined more steeply than their habitat, their requirements may be more specific than we realize. An Illinois study found an average of 3.8 fledglings for Loggerhead Shrikes foraging primarily on mowed or grazed versus an average of 2.75 fledglings for pairs foraging on cultivated fields or unmowed grass. Similar results were found in a Missouri study where the highest populations of Loggerhead Shrikes were located in regions with the highest proportion of pasture and hayfields.

Suitable habitat can be expanded by planting fencerows or appropriate nest trees next to existing pastures and other grassy areas.

Habitat: Breeding: Open country with scattered trees, shrubs, roadside hedges. Is attracted to areas with thorny trees such as hawthorn and honey locust. Favors low elevations.

Special Habitat Requirements: Open areas with short grasses, elevated perches from which to spot prey.

Habitat: Semi-open country with lookout posts; wires, trees, scrub. Breeds in any kind of semi-open terrain, from large clearings in wooded regions to open grassland or desert with a few scattered trees or large shrubs. In winter, may be in treeless country if fences or wires provide hunting perches.

Diet: Mostly large insects, also rodents and small birds. Diet in summer is mainly insects, especially grasshoppers and crickets, also beetles, wasps, and others. Eats mice and other rodents at all seasons, especially in winter, and eats small birds. Also lizards, snakes, crayfish, small fish and other items.

Nest: Placed in a dense (and often thorny) tree or shrub, usually 5-30 feet above the ground, occasionally higher, in a spot well hidden by foliage. Nest is a solidly constructed but bulky cup of twigs, grass, weeds, strips of bark, lined with softer materials such as rootlets, animal hair, feathers, plant down.

Conservation Status: During recent decades, numbers have declined in many areas; now essentially gone from the northeast. Reasons for decline poorly understood, may be related to pesticides and changes in habitat.