A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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Northern Shrike:Northern Shrike Kanguruaq "Butcher bird" is a name that would be hard for any bird to live with. But it's what many of us humans commonly call the Northern shrike, because of its habit of impaling larger prey on barbed wire, thorns or sharp twigs as it eats them or stores them for future meals. The Northern shrike gets its English name from "shriek," because of its shrill call when dodging goshawks or large falcons that prey on them. It nests farther north than its southern cousin the Loggerhead shrike and, although it migrates south in winter, will remain in the north until extreme cold and darkness set in. It belongs to the scientific family, Laniidae, from Latin lanius, meaning "butcher." Its full scientific name is Lanius excubitor, which literally means "watchful butcher." The name was given to the bird by the great Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, in the 1760's. Excubitor, by the way, actually means "sentinel" and refers to its habit of perching conspicuously on top of trees or utility poles and wires from where it can easily swoop down on its prey, usually consisting of insects, rodents, frogs and small birds such as chickadees and redpolls. Like many men in Southwest Alaska, the shrike is a true hunter. It usually strikes from above, sometimes hovering before dropping on ground-dwelling prey. When attacking birds in the air, Ianius is as fierce as a goshawk, either knocking its victim to the earth with a powerful blow from its bill or seizing it with its strong feet and sharp claws, then carrying it down to the ground where it kills it with a series of sharp bites to the neck with its hooked beak. It then impales the bird on a sharp branch or thorn where it proceeds to pluck and devour it piecemeal, starting with the head. It hunts voles and lemmings on the ground by first harassing them, then, when it sees an opening, seizing them by the neck with its beak and, as with birds, deftly piercing the spinal cord and severing the neck vertebrae. Small insects are usually caught in the air and swallowed in one gulp, but larger insects are held by the shrike's feet as it reaches down in mid-air or from its perch in a tree and tears off bite-size pieces. While living in the Delta, I only came across one Yupik name for the Northern shrike, 'kanguruaq," which is also one of the names used for snow buntings. It loosely translates as "frosty-looking bird" because of its white belly, which is the only color you see when you look up at them from the ground. They do have gray shoulders, however, and black mask, wings and tail, all of which you may see from the top if you happen to be flying overhead. Some of my best memories of the "kanguruaq" were in mid-August after returning to the village (Emmonak and Marshall, in particular) to resume my teaching duties, and hearing a gentle warbling song above me. On looking up, I would see three or four young shrikes perched on the electric wires, either being fed by their parents or being taught how to hunt simple things like insects. It was a good introduction to the onset of my own teaching season. These young were hatched from brown- or lavender-spotted gray-white eggs in a nest hidden somewhere in a nearby thicket of willows and alders. Twenty days later they left the nest, and ten days after that they could fly well enough to perch on the utility lines where I found them beginning to learn to feed themselves. As a species, these young shrikes have some built-in advantages which allow them to become extremely efficient daytime predators. They have remarkable eyesight, for one, comparable to that of hawks and eagles. They can spot a vole running on the ground or a flying bumblebee from more than 300 feet away. They can also fly very fast, having been clocked at up to 45 mph. They are able to hover over their prey before striking them. And finally, like falcons, they have a sharp toothlike structure (called "tomial teeth) on the cutting edge of their upper beak that allows for a piercingly quick death of their victims. All of these traits make the Northern shrike a mean killing machine. On the other hand, I have seen the adults lovingly feed one another while courting in the spring, and, of course, you couldn't ask for more doting parents. In both spring and mid to late summer, watch for them and you'll see what I mean.  | |
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