 |
|
Bird Sightings : Hebrides : Isabelline Shrike
Isabelline Shrike (Red-tailed Shrike, Butcher Bird)
lanius isabellinus
Photograph © Martin Scott
Brue - Isle of Lewis - Outer Hebrides (Western Isles)
22nd September, 2006Rare Vagrant
This very rare migrant visitor came to us from the South Siberian - Central Asian Steppe, or the Western China tablelands. Somewhere like Kazhakstan. (Quite a detour to Brue!)
At 16 to 18cm an Isabelline Shrike is a just bit smaller than a starling.
The adult Isabelline Shrike is sandy-greyish brown on the upper parts, and buff-white on the underparts, with a distinctive long, rusty-red coloured tail.
There is usually a small white patch on the wings.
An Isabelline Shrike usually wears a black eye-mask, rather like the wheatear, the wheatear however does not have a distinctively reddish-brown tail.
In Europe Isabelline Shrike are mostly seen in the Autumn, and they are usually immature, as is the one which arrived in Brue.This was the first Isabelline Shrike ever recorded in the Western Isles.
Shrikes are insect eaters, but they also eat small birds and mammals, so they have chunky pointed beaks.
One of the folk names for the Shrike in general is the "Butcher Bird" (Lanius means butcher) they store their catch by impaling it on the thorns of bushes and trees like the Hawthorn, making larders.
Brue has a scarcity of such trees and bushes, so the Isabelline Shrike which visited the area improvised and impaled it's catch upon the nearby barbed wire fences instead.
Home • Contact Webmaster • Advertising
Copyright © 2006 Western Isles Netspace. User Agreement and Privacy policy