Great grey shrike Lanius excubitor

Features

The great grey shrike is the largest European shrike and is the size of a blackbird.

Species	Bird
Living space	Meadow, Swamp
Size	24 cm
Weight	64 g

Description

The great grey shrike is recognisable by its grey, white and black coloured feathers. It has a grey head (its forehead is also grey), nape, shoulders, back and rump, while its throat, chest and abdominal part are white. It has a strong black beak with a curved tip and a wide black line drawn across its eyes. Its wings and tail are also jet black, their blackness is interrupted only by a few white spots on the wings and a white trim on the tail. The great grey shrike is easily noticed, most commonly on the top of a bush or tree, on a cable of electrical or telephone lines or on the top of a beanpole in a remote field. Every now and then it descends to the ground from its observation post if it thinks it has noticed a small rodent, such as a mouse or a vole. It is active in the day, which it spends catching its diverse pray from ambush. The bulk of its diet includes large insects, such as locusts, bugs, mantis, and the like, but it also eats lizards, small birds and small mammals. It is known for its habit to stick the prey it has caught on thorns or a barbed wire, or to wedge it between branches and thus save it for later. The great grey shrike is a migrant which lives and nests in the north and southwest of Europe and in Africa in the summer half-year. It inhabits mainly marshes and moors with thickets, landscapes with borders and large areas with fruit trees in the meadows.