{"id":9933,"date":"2012-05-09T10:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T08:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=9933"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:19:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:19:07","slug":"a-loggerhead-shrike-and-its-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/a-loggerhead-shrike-and-its-prey\/","title":{"rendered":"A Loggerhead Shrike and it\u2019s prey"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I was able to photograph a Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus) near the marina on Antelope Island State Park, Utah. It was an interesting experience for several reasons.<\/p>\n

When I first spotted the Shrike it was perched on top of a Rabbitbrush and I was able to get several images of the bird before it dove into the base of another nearby bush. I thought it was going to expel a pellet when I took this frame, but it didn’t.<\/p>\n

After a few moments the Shrike appeared on top of another Rabbitbrush adjacent to the one it had dived underneath. I wanted to get clear images of the bird’s tail without the foreground obstructions so I hoped it would move to another location.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Loggerhead preened for a bit, it looks like it also needed to clean the blood from a recent meal from its bill too.<\/p>\n

As I photographed the Shrike it suddenly hunched down, getting close to the bush it was perched on and I could tell that it was looking at something above and behind me but the roof of the “mobile blind” was in the way so I wasn’t sure what it was.<\/p>\n

By the time I created this frame I could tell that the Shrike was watching a Common Raven fly by, I’m fairly certain that Ravens do not prey on adult Loggerhead Shrikes but they may prey on their young. I have seen this hunkering down behavior in Loggerhead Shrikes before.<\/p>\n

Within just a few moments after the Raven flew out of range the Shrike dove into the base of the same Rabbitbrush it had been underneath before, at first I thought it went into the bush for safety reasons but I was soon to find out why it had been returning to that bush. When the Loggerhead flew out of the bush I could tell it had something in its bill, I quickly zoomed all the way out, locked on focus and was able to fire off four images as the Shrike perched briefly on a dried out Sunflower stalk. A pretty messy environment but I felt the image was interesting because of the prey in the bill.<\/p>\n

The bird flew off and out of sight so I got out of the mobile blind and went over to the bush the Shrike had gone into both times with one of my backup D200′s that has my Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens attached to it.<\/p>\n

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The Loggerhead Shrike’s impaled prey – Nikon D200, handheld, f11, 1\/45, ISO 250, +0.3 EV, Nikkor 18-200mm VR at 200mm, natural light<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

I was tickled to find the Shrike’s prey impaled on the bush, they cache prey that way. Think of it as a Shrike’s pantry, they know just where to go when they get hungry again.<\/p>\n

The day was partly overcast which is why I used a high ISO for the Shrike images to get the shutter speeds I thought I might need and also why I was using positive exposure compensation.<\/p>\n

It pays to observe your subject, to learn their behaviors and to not start up the engine to pull away too quick or I would have missed the shot of the Shrike with the prey in the bill. Having patience is a MUST in bird photography<\/p>\n

Mia McPherson, OntheWingPhotography.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I was able to photograph a Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus) near the marina on Antelope Island State Park, Utah. It was an interesting experience for several reasons. When I first spotted the Shrike it was perched on top of a Rabbitbrush and I was able to get several images of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":2192126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/loggerhead-shrike-prey-mia-mcpherson-6674.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}