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The Loggerhead Shrike — also called the Butcherbird for its gruesome habit of impaling prey on barbed wire and thorns — is a threatened species. Nature Saskatchewan wants your help to track sightings and preserve its prairie habitat.
“The Loggerhead Shrike is a predatory songbird, so that makes them pretty unique on the Prairies,” said Emily Putz, a Habitat Stewardship Co-ordinator with Nature Saskatchewan and the Shrubs for Shrikes Program. “They’re slightly smaller than a Robin, bigger than a Sparrow.
“Moose Jaw is a hotspot for them, so I’m sure there’s some there, maybe even within city boundaries.”
Breeding pairs of Loggerhead Shrike look for specific environments to help them hunt and eat their prey. They have a hooked, raptor-like beak, but their feet aren’t strong enough for the raptorial habit of holding their catch down for dinnertime — so, they have an unusual adaptation.
“Because they have dainty little songbird feet, they have to have something to hold on to their prey. They don’t have talons like a hawk would, so they impale their prey and then rip chunks off of it that way.”
So, if you see an open area, maybe a pasture or large mowed area, that’s perfect for the shrike to hunt grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, and other insects, along with rodents, small birds, lizards, and more (they’re opportunistic). Then, they need a natural larder: Something to help them store their prey. That could be a barbed-wire fence, a patch of thorny buffaloberry or hawthorn shrubs, or even a native plum tree with sharp twigs.
When those two requirements are met, you have a good chance of spotting the little grey, white, and black birds.
“They love cemeteries, golf courses, dog parks — those are the areas you’d find them within a city,” Putz explained. “But their natural habitat is native prairie, which Moose Jaw does have some surrounding it, and they like the coulee systems and the shrub lines there, and they’ve also adapted to man-made shelter belts. They will readily nest there as long as there are some thorns or barbed wire nearby for them to hang their prey on.”
Nature Saskatchewan’s ‘voluntary stewardship’ Shrubs for Shrikes Program works with landowners to preserve ideal habitat for the Loggerhead Shrike, especially in places where breeding pairs have been definitively spotted.
Their range once spanned the entirety of the Prairies, but habitat loss is driving their decline as native grasslands continue to be aggressively converted to agriculture. Now, the remaining population is mostly concentrated in southern Saskatchewan and part of southeast Alberta.
Call the toll-free HOOTline at 1-800-667-4668 if you spot the birds or one of their food larders. You can also email outreach@naturesask.ca. Your personal information is kept confidential.
“They’re the only species that does that,” Putz added. “If you see something impaled — usually there’s more than one thing impaled in the area — that’s a sure sign you’ve got a shrike. You can call us, and we take that as evidence that there is a nesting pair nearby.”