Wild Things: A songbird that makes other songbirds nervous

A Shrike. PHOTO BY ED KANZE

By ED KANZE

To mangle the opening line of Tolstoy’s second most famous novel, happy birds are all alike, but every group of unhappy birds is unhappy in its own way. So we’ve observed in winter at our place. 

Sometimes the birds around the bird feeder are unhappy because there’s a hawk in a nearby tree. This usually results in loud screaming by blue jays and a minor hullabaloo among the chickadees and a sudden lack of movement on the part of birds in general. 

Sometimes the birds around the bird feeder express dismay because a barred owl has appeared, not at night but in daylight. The reaction in this case is usually a lower key response than to, say, a fast-flying sharp-shinned or Cooper’s hawk. By comparison to these bird-eating hawks, the barred owl is slow-moving and less deft in its swoops and pivots. Therefore, I suspect, it is less threatening. There may be a certain amount of fuss among the chickadees and a modicum of screaming by perplexed blue jays in the presence of a watching owl, but on the whole, the response, at least at our place, tends toward the low-key.

Once, many years ago, a bobcat sauntered past our bird feeder. My memory (the accuracy does not come with a guarantee) is that all the birds went silent, then fled and disappeared. If I was a tender morsel encased in feathers and a bobcat appeared in my dining place, I’d go quiet and head somewhere else, too.

When a shrike appears, the unhappiness of our feeder birds takes a unique form. Crests on the blue jays seem to fold. Suddenly all the birds glance around nervously, and if they move, they move with great caution, in a kind of slink. Voices go quiet, or mostly quiet. The birds don’t leave. They stay. But they stay in a state of great furtiveness. (I want to write furtivity, but every source I consult refuses to accept that collection of letters as a legitimate word.)

Being very, very cautious is a good idea when you’re a small bird and a shrike, maybe not much bigger, is around. A shrike is a songbird by ancestry, but it’s evolved into what is essentially a bird of prey. It’s got a hook at the end of its bill, the better to rip you open with, when the time comes. They like to perch somewhere high and have a predatory leer, like a bandido in an old stereotype-cluttered Western movie. The black eyes are set in a black mask. It’s hard to tell where a shrike is looking, and that’s probably how the shrike wants it.

I’m writing these words in northern New York. You may be reading them in southern, where northern shrikes are not so often seen. But keep your eyes peeled. Once when I was curator of the Trailside Museum at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, my sharp-eyed, keen-eared colleague Richard Dyer spied and heard a bird outside the back door of the museum, and it was unfamiliar to him. I hurried to Richard’s side for a look. A northern shrike! It perched on a limb not far away, leering at us. I suppose it’s fair to say we leered back.

That shrike spent the winter in the reservation. Bird enthusiasts came in hordes to get a look at it. The best story I have to tell about it came to me from my late, great friend Tom Meyer. One winter day, Tom was out in the park cleaning out a bluebird box. As was often the case, there was a mouse nest inside. Tom took no pleasure in evicting mice but he loved bluebirds more, so he reached in and scooped. Out came a bunch of debris, and out of the debris flew a mouse. It landed on the bark of the tree that held up the box. The mouse was inches from Tom’s face. In a flash something gray and white and black came out of nowhere and slammed into that stunned rodent. Then the slammer flew away. It was our visiting shrike, putting on a demonstration of exactly what shrikes can do.