Northern Shrike drops by

A Northern Shrike visited our backyard feeder this week. It sat on one of our feeding stumps for about five minutes and watched the agitated mob of Black-capped Chickadees and Pine Grosbeaks in the branches overhead.

[click on images to enlarge]

Somewhat related is David Sibely's excellent, systematic analysis of the identification of a shrike that recently appeared in Long Island, New York. If you think differentiating Loggerhead Shrike from Northern Shrike is simple and straight forward, you might want to think again. You'll find the article here.