A couple weeks ago now, I spent the morning out just seeing what I could find. I initially had plans to be out of town that weekend, but winter in Montana does not want to go away this year, so I ended up not going since we had a big snow storm heading into the weekend. I still wanted to get out and do something, so I loaded up some gear and headed north to the Benton Lake NWR.
The morning started kind of slowly. The ice was mostly gone from the ponds, so there were a few ducks and geese around, but not a lot. I was actually hoping to maybe see some short-eared owls as I often see them in the spring out there, but I did not see any this time. I did see one Northern Harrier, but I was not able to get a picture. I did stop and get a few pictures of a horned lark that I was happy with. I also saw some snow geese out in a field, some swallows and a couple of Western Meadowlarks. Eventually I came across a Northern Shrike. I had seen them briefly before in other places, but never out there, and I had never had a chance to photograph one so I was pretty excited to see it.
A Horned Lark.
When I found it, it was flying back and forth between a couple of different trees and it didn’t seem super happy about my driving by. It would never sit still long enough to get any good pictures, so I actually kept going after a couple of minutes of observing it to see what else I could maybe find. After a while of not seeing much else, I drove the loop back and actually parked my truck where I had seen it earlier. My thought was that maybe if I was not moving it would feel more comfortable and would eventually return to the tree. I parked there for a while and waited, and sure enough it did eventually show up. And not only did it just show up, it came back and it had caught a small rodent, I am guessing maybe a mouse. I watched it for a while waiting for it to get into a position where I could get a clear picture, sort of amazed that such a small bird was able to not only catch, but fly with prey that was almost as big as it was.
Northern Shrike resting on a tree branch.
As I watched it for a while, it was kind of maneuvering the caught mouse around between branches and at one point had even dropped it to the ground and had to retrieve it. I finally realized what it was doing. It had found a sharp branch sticking out of a limb, and it was using the stick to repeatedly impale the mouse on it. At the time I was not aware of this behavior so I found it very interesting (and a little disturbing.) After talking to some other birders, I was told this is actually normal behavior for a Northern Shrike, and as a result, sometimes these birds are called “butcher birds.” I assume that maybe by doing this, it makes it easier for the bird to consume its prey, but I don’t actually know that for sure.
Northern Shrike with a mouse impaled on a branch. Click on images for larger view.
Northern Shrike with the bloodied mouse and branch it was using to impale its prey.
Since I didn’t see a lot else this morning, the encounter with the Northern Shrike did kind of save the day. Not that being out in nature is ever not a good time, but it’s that much better when I can come home with a couple of images I am happy with. Sorry for the graphic nature of the pictures, but I thought the interesting behavior was worth sharing.
A Western Meadowlark perched on a fence post.
A Tree Swallow on top of a post.