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Name: Loggerhead Shrike (Lanio Ludoviciano)
Where you live: North America
That eats: Mainly invertebrates, but also small vertebrates, including reptiles, amphibians, bats and birds.
Why it’s amazing: The loggerhead shrike is nicknamed the “butcher bird” thanks to its rather gruesome practice of impaling its prey with sharp thorns, twigs, and barbed wire.
This small songbird, which can take down prey heavier than itself, waits patiently tall hangers (sometimes using telephone cables) and keeps an eye out for a possible meal.
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Once it sees a victim, it pounces and uses its hooked, raptor-like beak to kill, repeatedly biting into the back of the neck to paralyze it. A study published in 2018 He also found that for larger prey, loggerhead shrikes grab their prey by the neck and shake it with a force equivalent to that of a human experiencing a slow car crash from behind. By shaking its prey in this way, the bird damages the spine, essentially using the weight of the victim’s body against it.
The loggerhead shrike actually impales its prey to store it for later; The sharp tips of a tree or fence act as a pantry for the bird to revisit later.
Impaling prey may also act as a way for males to display their hunting capabilities to females. A 1989 study of a related shrike species in Israel They found that a male’s cache increased before the breeding season and that males with the largest caches bred first and sired more offspring.
another study discovered that impaling prey can help reduce the toxicity of a kill. The highly toxic eastern lubber grasshopper (Romalea guttata), for example, causes nausea, regurgitation and even death in some predators. But when a loggerhead shrike impales the insect and returns a couple of days later, the bird can safely consume it.