Not Sure What NBA Team to Cheer For? Here's our Birder's Guide to the Playoffs.
It's the postseason. It's fall migration. What a time to be alive.
Fledglings. Photo: Cuatrok77/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Lanius ludovicianus
Conservation status | During recent decades, numbers have declined in many areas; now essentially gone from the northeast. Reasons for decline poorly understood, may be related to pesticides and/or changes in habitat. |
---|---|
Family | Shrikes |
Habitat | Semi-open country with lookout posts; wires, trees, scrub. Breeds in any kind of semi-open terrain, from large clearings in wooded regions to open grassland or desert with a few scattered trees or large shrubs. In winter, may be in totally treeless country if fences or wires provide hunting perches. |
Forages mostly by watching from an exposed perch, then swooping down to take prey on or near ground or from low vegetation. Kills its prey using its hooked bill. Often stores uneaten prey by impaling it on thorn or barbed wire, returning to eat it later.
5-6, sometimes 4-8. Grayish white to pale buff, with spots of brown and gray often concentrated at large end. Incubation is by female, about 16-17 days. Male feeds female during incubation (sometimes bringing her food he has stored on thorns earlier). Young: Both parents feed nestlings. Young leave nest at about 17-21 days, are tended by parents for another 3-4 weeks.
Both parents feed nestlings. Young leave nest at about 17-21 days, are tended by parents for another 3-4 weeks.
Mostly large insects, also rodents and small birds. Diet in summer is mainly insects, especially grasshoppers and crickets, also beetles, wasps, and others. Eats mice and other rodents at all seasons, especially in winter, and eats small birds. Also sometimes included in diet are spiders, snails, frogs, lizards, snakes, crayfish, small fish, and other items.
In many regions, nesting begins quite early in spring. In courtship, male performs short flight displays; male feeds female. Nest: Placed in a dense (and often thorny) tree or shrub, usually 5-30' above the ground, occasionally higher, in a spot well hidden by foliage. Nest (built by both sexes) is a solidly constructed but bulky cup of twigs, grass, weeds, strips of bark, lined with softer materials such as rootlets, animal hair, feathers, plant down.
Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.
Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.
Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.
It's the postseason. It's fall migration. What a time to be alive.
On Colorado’s grasslands, Rachel Hopper skillfully captures the beauty and brutality of this fierce songbird’s distinctive style of food storage.
Ornithologists are trying to correct biases and misguided assumptions that can undermine environmental efforts and scientific knowledge.
Let us send you the latest in bird and conservation news.
Visit your local Audubon center, join a chapter, or help save birds with your state program.
Membership benefits include one year of Audubon magazine and the latest on birds and their habitats. Your support helps secure a future for birds at risk.
Our email newsletter shares the latest programs and initiatives.