Reports
Sunnylea Junior School
Loggerhead Shrike
| The research report is on the Loggerhead shrike. The
scientific name for this land is lanius ludovician migrans. The Loggerhead belongs to the
bird family. The Loggerhead shrike is endangered and threatened. This report has
information about its food, habitat, appearance, threats and interesting facts. The Loggerhead shrike has mostly dark colours. It's a business like bird. Its got a gray head with a black and white beak. The Logger head has black on the top of its tail and a black mask around it's eyes. It has a large head and a hooked beak with black and white wings. The Loggerhead's back is gray and has black and white stripes down it's tail. It's chest and belly are white. It is a bit smaller than a robin. On the top of its tail it is black. The Loggerhead shrike has a different place to live in summer and winter. During the summer it lives in grasslands, orchards and open areas. It can be found in the USA and possible Mexico. Also utility wires, fence posts and dead branches. In the winter it lives in southern Ontario. And it's got the lifestyle of a hawk. Usually their nesting is in thorny plants like hawthorn or thorny buffalo berry. The nest is 15- 20 cm in diameter. It is made out of thickly woven plant materials. The nest protects it against cold rain, storms and unseasonal snow storms in the spring. The Loggerhead shrike has many different things to eat. The Loggerhead shrike mainly eats insects but it also eats small hawks and small animals. The Loggerhead shrike is known to impale mice, frogs, bees, caterpillars and moths and hunts beetles. It is also known to hang it's food on a farmer's fence or hawthorn shrub. It helps farmers by eating large numbers of grasshoppers which are pests to farmers. The Loggerhead shrike is endangered mostly because of man made threats. Severe over grazing and changes in land use from natural grassland to forest or crops. Some man made objects that reduce their population is pesticides. Pesticides reduce the numbers of babies that are born. Some Loggerheads are hit by cars while they are hunting at the roadside. Some of the natural threats that are harmful to the Loggerhead shrike are its babies are killed by heavy rain fall and coolness. The Loggerhead shrike is a very interesting bird. It became endangered in 1992 in eastern Canada and threatened in western Canada. It is also called butcher bird. The usually number of eggs is five to seven. At two weeks of age the Loggerhead shrike is almost as heavy as its parents. By Alison
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Copyright 1997, 2000 - Joan Goble and René de Vries
