A summer with the birds (5/7). A magpie more gutter than thief

It happens to have a sumptuous dress, a sweet, fruity and elegant song. But never trust appearances. The shrike, whether it is gray, red-backed, red-headed or pink-breasted, is a formidable killer.

My first shrike was when I was a child. It was a gray shrike, the terror of the Arctic, that would come down to the northern United States in winter in search of prey. I remember sitting at the window, watching the chickadees on the feeder hanging on the other side of the glass. It is zero degrees outside, a thick snow covers the landscape.

Suddenly, in an explosion of feathers, they rush into the forest, uttering piercing cries that make your hair stand on end. Alarm cries that, in the language of tits, mean “Predator!” My heart stops: a magnificent shrike perches on the top of the bird feeder, its eyes conquering, its mask black, its beak hooked. It has just missed its lightning attack. It flies away immediately and chases the frightened tits into the spruce branches.

Having watched them for thousands of hours, they are not very shy. I had never seen them so terrified. I will never know if one of them succumbed to the shrike which, in order to eat its fill, went around the neighborhood feeders to finish off sparrows barely smaller than it.

Because the shrike may be, like them, a passerine bird – this large group of songbirds that are largely insectivorous or frugivorous – it is distinguished by its behavior. It is a fearsome predator, like a bird of prey such as the sparrowhawk or the falcon. When it captures a bird, a vole, or a large insect on the ground, it often decapitates it and then impales it on a bramble thorn or barbed wire. Then it leaves it there, for later, next to other prey already skewered in this place called a “lardoir”: its pantry. Not out of a taste for the medieval, but because as a simple passerine bird, it lacks the powerful talons of a real bird of prey to immobilize its prey. So it uses the spikes it finds in nature to pin its victims, which it then dismembers to feed its young.

And in love despite everything

This spring, in the shrubby meadows of Fontainebleau which are full of delicious prey, I went to pay homage to the beauty.

In our temperate latitudes, it is the red-backed shrike that is rampant. Grey head, chestnut back, pale pink chest, white and black tail, Indian ink black mask. Sublime.

A handsome male was busily hunting insects in the grass, and feeding them to his sweetheart, as wedding offerings. She was waiting to be served, on top of a fence. They found themselves perched side by side for a moment, kissing, delousing each other tenderly. She was visibly full, satisfied.

According to my wife, who was with me, she even rested her head on his left side for a moment, on the “shoulder” of her chosen one. Yes, shrikes are merciless to their prey, but they know love well.