Whenever I ask people if they know what a raptor is I often have people tell me that they are birds of prey. While all raptors are birds of prey, not all birds of prey are raptors. Take the loggerhead shrike for example, this small songbird is actually a bird of prey feeding on a diet of insects, small mammals, small reptiles and birds.
Raptors use their strong talons to catch and kill their prey but the shrike does not have talons, which is the main reason it is not classified as a raptor. Instead of using its feet the shrike uses its beak to catch its prey. The shrike has a notch on its beak called a
tomial tooth which it uses to sever the spinal cord of its prey, falcons also have a
tomial tooth. The shrike will then wedge the prey in a crevice or impale it on barbwire or a branch and use its hooked beak to rip it into bite size
pieces. While loggerhead shrikes are found in western Minnesota during the summer, a loggerhead sighting is more rare then spotting one of their cousins the northern shrike, which we see during the winter. I photographed this loggerhead at the
Laguna Atascosa NWR in south Texas.
Whenever I ask people if they know what a raptor is I often have people tell me that they are birds of prey. While all raptors are birds of prey, not all birds of prey are raptors. Take the loggerhead shrike for example, this small songbird is actually a bird of prey feeding on a diet of insects, small mammals, small reptiles and birds.
Raptors use their strong talons to catch and kill their prey but the shrike does not have talons, which is the main reason it is not classified as a raptor. Instead of using its feet the shrike uses its beak to catch its prey. The shrike has a notch on its beak called a tomial tooth which it uses to sever the spinal cord of its prey, falcons also have a tomial tooth. The shrike will then wedge the prey in a crevice or impale it on barbwire or a branch and use its hooked beak to rip it into bite size pieces. While loggerhead shrikes are found in western Minnesota during the summer, a loggerhead sighting is more rare then spotting one of their cousins the northern shrike, which we see during the winter. I photographed this loggerhead at the Laguna Atascosa NWR in south Texas.
4 comments:
I foresee a horrow film starring the shrike !!Learned a lot here..
What a darling bird!
And it looks so sweet and innocent, too, quite unlike the falcons who eat songbirds in our trees and drop the wings, tails and feet on our deck.
Well, of course it is innocent. It is only being itself, as an eagle is only being itself. But look at the cute little face in that first photo, enough to break a grandmother's heart. LOL
—Kay, Alberta, Canada
nice shots
Post a Comment