Red-backed Shrike
The Red-backed Shrike is a carnivorous passerine bird and member of the shrike family. The general colour of the male’s upper parts is reddish. It has a grey head and a typical shrike black stripe through the eye. Underparts are tinged pink and the tail has a black and white pattern similar to that of a Wheatear. In the female and young birds the upperparts are brown and vermiculated and the underparts are buff and also vermiculated.
The Red-backed Shrike eats large insects, small birds, frogs, rodents and lizards. Like other shrikes it hunts from prominent perches and impales corpses on thorns or barbed wire as a "larder." This practice has earned it the nickname of "butcher bird."
The Red-backed Shrike breeds in most of Europe and western Asia and winters in tropical Africa. Once a common migratory visitor to the UK, numbers declined sharply during the 20th century. The bird's last stronghold was in Breckland but by 1988 just a single pair remained, successfully raising young at Santon Downham. The following year for the first time no nests were recorded in the UK but since then sporadic breeding has taken place, mostly in Scotland and Wales, and in September 2010 the RSPB announced that a pair had raised chicks at a secret location on Dartmoor where the bird last bred in 1970. This return to south west England has been an unexpected development and has raised speculation that a warming climate could assist the bird in re-colonising some of its traditional sites, if only in small numbers.
Date: 19th May 2016
Location: Vainupea, Lahemaa National Park, Estonia
The Red-backed Shrike eats large insects, small birds, frogs, rodents and lizards. Like other shrikes it hunts from prominent perches and impales corpses on thorns or barbed wire as a "larder." This practice has earned it the nickname of "butcher bird."
The Red-backed Shrike breeds in most of Europe and western Asia and winters in tropical Africa. Once a common migratory visitor to the UK, numbers declined sharply during the 20th century. The bird's last stronghold was in Breckland but by 1988 just a single pair remained, successfully raising young at Santon Downham. The following year for the first time no nests were recorded in the UK but since then sporadic breeding has taken place, mostly in Scotland and Wales, and in September 2010 the RSPB announced that a pair had raised chicks at a secret location on Dartmoor where the bird last bred in 1970. This return to south west England has been an unexpected development and has raised speculation that a warming climate could assist the bird in re-colonising some of its traditional sites, if only in small numbers.
Date: 19th May 2016
Location: Vainupea, Lahemaa National Park, Estonia
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Also in: Estonia
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