(Lanius ludovicianus)
Description: Broad black mask extends above eye and across top of bill. Head and back bluish gray; underparts white, very faintly barred. All-dark hooked bill.
Habitat: Open fields with scattered
trees, open woodland, scrub.
Diet: Insects, small vertebrates and carrion.
Display: In courtship, male feeds female and performs flight display back and forth about 20 feet from female. Mock pursuits occur also.
Nest: Bulky, cup-shaped nest of twigs and bark strips woven
together and lined with fine materials; usually hidden below crown in crotch or on large branch, occasionally in vine tangle.
Eggs: Grayish-buff, marked with gray, browns or black, often near large end; about one inch long.
Natural history notes: Loggerheads hunt in open or brushy areas, diving from a low perch then rising swiftly to the next lookout. Loggerhead and northern shrikes, sometimes known as "butcher birds," lack talons; they impale their prey on thorns or barbed-wire, either to eat them immediately or for future use. Shrikes have uncanny memory: In Texas, shrikes were reported returning to mummified frogs they had stored eight months before. In flight, the loggerhead shrike can resemble the northern mockingbird; loggerhead has darker tail and wing and smaller white wing patches.
