WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Violent Habits of a Winter Predator

It won't be long before we have to say goodbye to our winter birds, but naturalist Charlie Browne from the Fairbanks Museum and I found a great one the other day.

"Look right at the top of that little sapling over there, there's a Northern Shrike. It's a really special bird sighting here, because they are only here in the winter."

"Now this bird is a little... "violent" sometimes isn't it?"

"Well Northern Shrikes are predators, they're here only in the winter, they prey on small mammals, and small birds and they are notorious because just as you put your leftovers in the refrigerator, they stash their leftovers on the thorn of a hawthorne tree."

"Why does he do that?"

"So he can come back later for a second meal."

"The chickadees around here seem a little nervous."

" Well, one of the things that small birds do when a predator is present, they often will freeze and hide. That's once option they have, the other is to mob, or alert all of their friends. We see a lot of different behaviors in the presence of predators by the small birds."

"How do you know if you are looking at a shrike?"

"Well, a shrike has a slightly hooked beak, and it's a grey, and black and white bird. Very strikingly marked although this one is a young one. And the beak is of course designed to tear prey, but they have some of the markings that are similar to a mocking bird."

"How much longer is he going to be here?"

"Northern Shrikes are usually gone from Vermont by the end of March, because they breed in the sub arctic, and they are only here in the winter months."

"So this is their idea of coming someplace warm for the winter months? Ha ha."

"Exactly, they like the open country, they hunt from small trees over open fields and they especially like it when there's not a lot of snow."

By Sharon Meyer