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Posted: April 29, 2012

Butcher bird

The following description from the Canadian Museum of Nature should work up your appetite.

The Northern Shrike is known as the ‘butcher bird’ because of its unusual practice of impaling prey on thorns or barbed wire, much in the way butchers hang meat in their shops. Mice, small birds, and large insects form the bulk of the shrike’s diet.

As is typical of birds that hunt animals for food, it has a strongly notched bill that is capable of tearing flesh.

Above photo: Northern Shrike photographed on April 19, at the Radium Mill Pond – by Ross MacDonald.

Courtesy the Friends of Kootenay National Park


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