A three shrike weekend doesn't happen very often. Not for me at least. I think I once saw that many shrikes in a day when I was a teenager and snuck out the family car for a few hours of winter birding one Sunday afternoon. That was 20+ years ago.
Shrikes are pretty cool birds. Though they are just the size of a robin, Northern Shrikes catch small rodents and small birds to survive the winter. They have to do the catching and killing with their sharply-hooked beaks since their legs and feet are small and weak.
In the northern fringe of U.S. states and southern Canada, Northern Shrikes filter down from the Boreal in winter. Some years there are more than others but they are never common. They are solitary birds most of the year, usually seen sitting at the very top of a tree with a characteristic horizontal posture like a weathervane.
So when Allison and I saw three shrikes over New Year's weekend, it was sort of an event. Not an aesthetic experience. Not a wilderness experience. All three of the shrikes were spotted from the car along highways while driving at least 55 mph in places where there was no opportunity to stop and study them. But still, to see three of these Boreal specialists in a weekend was a highlight. Our Matinicus CBC group did see an immature Northern Shrike back on December 15th. Before that the last one I had seen was in the town of Deline in the Northwest Territories last August. It was cruising around the town, perching on telephone wires and the tops of teepees and chasing the White-crowned Sparrows in hopes of a meal.
Today, Monday (Jan. 9), on a morning drive to the airport in Portland from Gardiner, I spotted what was almost certainly one of the same shrikes we had spotted on the three-shrike weekend. It was in almost the same place along the highway, perched like a sentinel, as if surveying his frozen kingdom.
The shrike has inspired me to engage in my own version of a favorite game of birders as I make my way across the U.S. to Seattle today for meetings and inspiration with my colleagues from the Boreal Songbird Initiative.
The game?
To see how many Boreal bird species I can see in my journey from airplanes, airports, and taxis between the time I spotted the shrike this morning to when I arrive at my hotel in Seattle this evening. From the car on the way to the airport I did spot a couple of species of gulls and a flock of American Black Ducks so my list stands at about three species.
Next stop Laguardia.
