The Oxymoron Of The Northern Shrike - Death Of A Songbird

Northern Shrike, Phippsburg, Maine March 2, 2011

Two Northern Shrikes photographed in Pembroke, Maine March 31, 2011. Note that each is on a different type of utility wire.

Northern Shrike in Pembroke, Maine with a caterpillar capture. I was photographing this bird on the wire above when it swooped to the ground in front of me and whisked up this delicacy.

     Now here's an oxymoron for you, the Northern Shrike is a predatory songbird. In my  ideal world, birds would be one or the other, either precious little singers, chortling and warbling in the trees telling us all is well with the world, or killers, but not both. Like most humans, I need a certain amount of order and logic. I like to compartmentalize things and when they don't wrap up in tidy packages the way my mind wants them to, I'm left confused and agitated.  My brain gloms onto discrepancies between sometimes glaring realities and what I want to be true. I want to believe in the tidiness of good and evil, right and wrong. The truth is, birds, no matter how lovely, must eat and some of them eat other birds, as does the Northern Shrike.
   Shrikes sit on wires or prominent elevations like this weather vane to hunt. They tail dip if alerted or courting, as do mockingbirds. Shrikes miss very little of what moves below them, suddenly launching in a tight tuck to the ground to snatch a catch. Like some hawks, they do a little hover flying when scanning fields. The Latin species name of the Northern Shrike, Lanius excubitor, means "Butcher watchman." The shrike has a hooked, sharp bill for tearing flesh and killing prey. They don't have talons, like other predators, so they can't grasp onto food. Instead, they impale their kills onto thorns or sometimes, the barbs of barbed wire. Early observers thought this to be wanton killing, but it allows the shrike to then pull bits of flesh away from the large insects which make up the bulk of their diet, or rodents and sometimes other birds. Food items that are too big to consume in one sitting are also stored by hanging on thorns or in the crotches of branches to be consumed later. This adaptation helps shrikes to survive periods of food scarcity. These food caches are also part of courtship displays by males seeking to impress females with their hunting skills. Usually, the caches are found about three feet off the ground and in the vicinity of nest sites. When I was younger I was often attracted to guys that had a "bad boy" streak. A guy that would hang a dead rat on a fence to woo me would have been right up my alley, too.
     At just under ten inches from bill to tail tip, the shrike is a powerful bird that will kill birds bigger than itself. The shrike comes up underneath and behind a flying victim then grabs the feet or tail snatching the unsuspecting bird from mid air or stunning it with it's strong bill.  The Northern Shrike is also a talented songster with an appealing,  melodic warble. They have been known to mimic the songs of smaller songbirds to lure them to their deaths. They are also easily confused in the field with Northern Mockingbirds, known too for their splendid ability to mimic and sing.
     In North America, there are two kinds of shrikes, the Loggerhead and the Northern. Their ranges overlap slightly during the winter. In Maine the most commonly seen is the Northern Shrike, also called the Great Grey Shrike in Britain. Shrikes are boreal birds of the taiga and northern forests. They migrate slightly south of their summering range for the winter. In southern Maine, Northern shrikes are usually seen as migrating birds. This year, there have been higher than usual numbers of them reported. They are territorial birds most often seen singly, though they do form monogamous mating pairs for the breeding season. Males and females look very much alike. Both build the nest, incubate and care for young. Shrikes are not endangered, though habitat destruction has likely resulted in reduced numbers. Pollutants, especially heavy metals, find their way into shrikes by way of the rodents they consume.
     Long ago I was suddenly fired from a job I desperately needed and truly loved. The event so devastated me that it  was the last job I had in health care as a registered nurse. I still have a Maine nursing license and will probably take it to my grave, though I no longer practice. I maintain my license, not because I think I might one day want to return to work in health care, but because for over half of my life, being a nurse was my identity. People often said to me "Wow, a registered nurse, huh? I could never do that kind of work. It takes a special person to deal with all that stuff. Blood? Yuk! Not me! Thank God there are people like you; I couldn't do it." I had a lot of pride wound up in being that special person they talked about.     
     And, in nursing, I wasn't just any nurse, either; I was the cream that rose to the top. I had a career with a capital 'C.' As a supervisor in a rural community hospital where there weren't doctors after supper time, I ran from one crisis to another. We nurses handled everything, the strokes, the heart attacks, the respiratory failures, car accidents, overdoses, all of it, until a doc could get out of bed and get there. It wasn't uncommon for the nurses to manage a case even when a doctor did show up because they weren't always as experienced as we were, or even sober. I took care of sick, terrified and often dying people, their families and my staff. As the interface between nurses, doctors, patients and families; I was the problem solver; and frequently, the hero. I thrived on the adrenalin rush coursing through my super star veins. I loved what I did for work and it was me. For decades, I lived and loved the crises and stories and glory.
     Then one day, all of a sudden it was over. Without warning, I was called into an office and fired. Flimsy reasons were given, thin excuses to cover the human resource depatment's decision. I hadn't done anything wrong! Outraged, I forced them to try to explain to me what was happening, but they said their decision was not performance based. "The patients and your co workers love you. You are an accomplished clinician, but it's just not working out. We need a comfort level," is what I was left with to make sense of the catastrophe that became my life.
    I was at first, filled with rage and wanting vengeance. In the hours when sleep was impossible, I plotted and planned how I would get back at them. I fantasized my vindication. I'd tear them down as they had torn me down! I wallowed deep in humiliation, confusion, anger and helplessness. Terrified  about money, I was scared for my children's welfare. I saw my whole life and future collapsing before  my eyes. The whys spun around in my tortured head night after night.  "It's just not fair! It's not right! Why? Why!!!????" I cried, howled, and ranted. I couldn't make sense of any of it. There wasn't a pigeon hole big enough or the right shape to stuff this bird into. I had done and been everything I knew how to be and yet, for some reason in the end, I was not good enough. That empty fact left me with nothing to hold onto and I slid deep into depression.
     I spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what had happened. Needing to make sense of it, to see the logic, I tried to find someone to blame. "Who did this," seemed a question with an answer that would restore order. A few faces and names linked to ordinary work place dust ups came to mind. Paranoia reigned my brain swamped by waves of rage from which I'd crash into grief. In the end, I never did know what was behind my being fired.  Eventually, it was just the passage of time that loosened my grip on the need to know. I had to get on with my life. But, I did conclude that at the heart of it was an error in my thinking, not my doing; I had forgotten that songbirds can also be killers. Most of the time, there's no right or wrong, just the need to survive.
    My employers were people just trying to do their jobs. They probably weren't the evil incarnate I was at one point sure of. Most likely, they don't even remember what for me remains one of the most painful events of my life. To this day, I don't know why I was fired, but I am pretty sure somebody simply did what they thought they had to do to survive. I was merely the one that wound up impaled on a barb.

Northern Mockingbird, Phippsburg, Maine May 27, 2010

Mockingbirds are easily confused with Northern shrikes. They have a pointed, not hooked bill, are a little larger and have a longer tail.

For some of the information, thanks to:
wikipedia.com
allaboutbirds.org
whatbird.com


Sibley, David A., The Sibley Guide To Birds (2000)  Knopf: New York (2001) pp 340-341
Robbins, C.S., Bruun, B. & Zim, H., A Guide To Field Identification - Birds Of North America (1966),Golden Press: New York ((1966) pp242-243



"I've Had Eyes For You, Babe!" Common And Barrow's Goldeneyes

Common goldeneye drake, photographed in Phippsburg, Maine on Totman Cove. He just rolled the dice.

Barrow's goldeneye drake, photographed in Brunswick, Maine on the New Meadows River. If the bird had moved a hundred feet east, it would have been in Bath.

     So far, this has started out to be a big birding year for me. By the fourteenth of January, I had three life first birds: Bohemian waxwings, a Varied Thrush and a Barrow's goldeneye. If I continue at this rate of three new birds every two weeks, by the end of the year, I would accrue 112 new birds. Oh, if only that would be true. I might as well wish for an upside down, 60 degree, double, arcing halo intersected with a rainbow.

     There have been about 330 species of birds recorded in Maine. This changes a little as new birds are identified, which happens more often than what one might think. I'm not sure exactly how many, but there may be one or more a year.  My life list is 190, a fact I feel more anxious about revealing than my weight. Anyone who has tried to lose weight will tell you that the last few pounds are much harder to lose than the first two hundred. Birding is much the same; the next hundred birds are going to come much harder than the first two hundred. I may have to get out of my bathrobe, a major mental obstacle for me. Or, I could just sit and wait for them to show up, a strategy that has worked pretty well for me, so far. All three of these life birds should not have been here at all, or at least not to be expected with any consistency year to year. I'm on a real roll like a fevered gambler at a craps table, "Come on, dice! Momma needs a new bathrobe!"

 

  There are two kinds of goldeneyes, Common  and Barrow's goldeneyes. There are over a million Common goldeneyes and they reside over a much bigger area than the Barrow's. Populations of Common goldeneyes stretch uninterrupted across Canada and the northern United States. They are one of the last birds to migrate in the fall from these northern reaches. We have them here in the winter in protected coastal coves and inlets, but not the summer. An elegant, medium sized, diving duck they are fodder for hunters.

     Goldeneyes tend to dive simultaneously as a flock. A brace of them will seem to appear magically on the water surface and  then suddenly disappear. Both species of goldeneyes dive as deep as twenty feet in search of invertebrates, crustaceans and some vegetation. Neither species is endangered. Barrow's, though uncommon in Maine are seen with increasing frequency.
      Destruction of nesting habitat and pollutants are the biggest threats to their populations, though goldeneyes are the only ducks that have benefited from acidification of lakes. It is believed that acid tolerant, aquatic insects on which the ducks feed proliferate in acidified lakes, because the fish that feed on the insects don't tolerate that changed environment. Aquatic insects make up most of the ducks' diet while they are nesting and crustaceans the rest of the time.

     Both goldeneye species breed and nest in the biome of the taiga, the bitter northern reaches just below the Arctic tundra. They are sometimes referred to as 'boreal birds' indicating that they come from the northern forests, just like the Bohemian waxwings. While goldeneyes do live on lakes and rivers of the north woods, they also occupy the more barren parts of the north, so are more accurately called birds of the taiga.     

     When goldeneye chicks hatch their eyes are gray-brown. As they age, the eyes turn purple-blue, then blue, then green-blue. By five months of age they have turned a clear, pale green-yellow. The eyes will be bright yellow in adult males and pale yellow to white in females.
      An early contributor to modern birding as we know it today, was Walter Bradford Barrows, a professor of biology who worked for the US Department Of Agriculture. In the mid to late 1800s, Barrows wrote many respected books and professional papers about birds. The Barrow's goldeneye, was however not named for Walter Barrows, but rather after an English statesman, Sir John Barrows.

  The Barrow's goldeneye favors mountain lakes, often breeding at elevations of 10,000 feet or more. It is usually found in smaller flocks than the Common goldeneye. It feeds almost entirely on mollusks, but also eats occasional snails, sea urchins, or marine worms. The population of Barrow's goldeneyes is under 200,000, less than a quarter of the number of Common goldeneyes. The populations of them in the west and the east are completely distinct groups. Its patchy distribution suggests that it is an ancient species that was once more widespread and is now in decline. In the East, it is greatly outnumbered by the Common goldeneye but may occur in flocks of hundreds in the Canadian Maritimes. The range map on the left shows how few of them there are near Maine. Sometimes, a single Barrow's can be found amongst hundreds of Common goldeneyes. Hybridization of the two species occurs, but is rare.
     Goldeneyes are also called "Whistlers." When they fly their wing beats make a loud whistling sound. The whistling sound helps to identify them. Many times, I have heard them before I have seen them. Nonetheless, they are a wary little duck and hard to approach which makes them a challenge to photograph.
     I have been looking for a Barrow's, a birding needle in the Common goldeneye haystack, for a couple of years. To finally see one was a thrill! And, though I did have to get out of my bathrobe, I didn't have to get out of  my car, nor did I have to travel more than fifteen miles, preserving my standing as The Big Lebowski Of Birding.
     The simplest ways to differentiate a Barrow's drake from a Common drake is the patch on the face and the spur of black running down from its shoulder, as you can see in the photos above. The patch on the Barrow's face is a crescent which runs up beyond the eye. In the Common goldeneye the patch is found below the eye. Barrow's have a purple cast to the head, while Commons are green tinted and both birds have slightly different head shapes. The color characteristics are hard to see unless the light is just right and the head shape is a little tough unless the bird turns in the right direction. Females are harder to differentiate. Usually, the Barrow's hen's bill is mostly yellow where the Common's is only yellow on the tip. When the day comes that I roll the dice and shoot snake eyes on the goldeneye hens, I'll show you what their bills look like. Maybe next week.

thanks to:
whatbird.com
allaboutbirds.com
Wikipedia.com
Kastner, J., A World Of Watchers (1986) New York: Knopf(1986) pp. 42-44
Sibley, D.A., The Sibley Guide To Birds (2000), New York: Knopf (2001), pp. 100
Stokes, D.and L.,Stokes Field Guide To Birds (1996), New York: Little, Brown & Co.(1996) pp. 83-84
For a great guide to birding in Maine click here: Maine Birding
For more on the great taiga biome, click here http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/taiga.htm