I had a doctor's appointment in North Attleboro today. While I was sitting in the room waiting for the doctor someone found a Northern Shrike at Snake Den Farm. As it was, that was only twenty two minutes from where I was sitting. I had never seen a Northern Shrike but have tried multiple times. Needless to say my routine doctor's visit couldn't get over fast enough.
Northern Shrike are little predator birds. They are smaller than a Blue Jay and look much like a Northern Mockingbird. They mostly live in the evergreen forest south of the Arctic Tundra. During the winter they will occasionally make their way south towards New England. In my years of birding, this is only the third one that I know of in Rhode Island. They hunt small birds and will actually use the barbs of barbed wire to impale their prey.
Off I went to Snake Den as soon as I walked out of the office. I pulled into the parking lot and got my scope out. I scanned the tops of trees in the distance and found it pretty quickly. I called over some other birders that were looking in a different direction and we all looked at it in our scopes for twenty minutes. Eventually, when the sun went below the tree line the Shrike took off and we lost it against the darkness of the forest. I took some digiscoped photos with my phone over my scope's eyepiece. They are crap, but technically I did get a photo. The Shrike was probably a quarter mile away or more so I'm just happy I found it.
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