Northern Shrike and some editing

I have been aware of Northern Shrikes ever since I was a kid.  I had read about a robin-sized bird that would catch insects and other small prey and store them on the spine of a thorn bush for later consumption.  If a thorn bush is not available they also have the habit of cramming them into the fork of a bifurcating branch.  I had never seen one though until this June when I was in Texas where there were dozens of them.  What's odd about this is that they were well beyond their range according to all the maps I looked at.  I saw them about 60 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico just outside Huston.  And it wasn't just an accidental.  As I said, there were a lot of them.

Shrikes, also called butcher birds for obvious reasons, have curved powerful beaks with sharp edges used to dispatch and dismember prey.  They are strictly carnivorous and take a wide range of foods, including other birds.  According to the website All About Birds, they "employ an impressive variety of [hunting] tactics."  It is worth a read in case you want to pursue the matter further.  They do not have the fierce talons that raptors have but manage nonetheless.  Shrikes have been known to even take down prey larger than themselves.

The inset in the above photo shows what my original capture looked like.  There was an annoying branch that cut across the bird's beak and ruined what was otherwise a good shot.  It took me the better part of half an hour in Photoshop to remove the offending twig.  I had to recreate the throat, whiskers, and partially hidden beak using a variety of methods, although my favourite tool for this is the clone-stamp tool.  You will notice that the bottom of the image is a little soft.  I had to move slowly when photographing the bird and kept vegetation between us to reduce its anxiety.  Some of it got in front of the lens and was responsible for the area's softness.

I am not in the habit of checking off birds I see from a list as some do.  I applaud people for their quest to keep a "life list", after all, it is a noble pursuit.  My goal is to see places (landscape photography), photograph creatures of interest (wildlife photography and macro photography) and just appreciate the marvels that our world has.  I can tolerate urban spectacles to some degree but prefer rural settings where nature exists in abundance.  I know the shrikes would approve.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com