FINCHforum

It's breeding season our side of the world and between the chirps coming from the aviary's, the wild birds are in full swing too. The latest being two baby Fiscal Shrikes (butcher birds). The male shrike does all the feeding of the young and it's dad who normally hassles my aviary's. He actually be-headed an OC waxbill through the wire last year...

But watching these youngsters have me fascinated. Dad is not only teaching them to come down to the water bowl, but of course he is showing them the aviary's. The interesting part is how my birds react. When the adult shrike is around, the waxbills shout their warning call's and everyone flies up to their perches and scream at him until he moves away. The baby shrikes kinda just flops onto the side of the aviary and everyone inside just ignores them. I even watched my one canary come and say hello through the wire. Nature amazes me how they instinctively know they are babies and not a threat.

The cutest part is that daddy shrike shouts at the babies "stay here, I will be back later" and off he goes. I now have two young shrikes using my garden as day care (dad will chase them off as soon as they become more mature and then I am back to just the one nuisance again )

Pretty birds. We get Loggerhead Shrikes here. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Loggerhead_Shrike/id

I had a shrike that stayed around my area, that became so tame that he helped himself to my meal-worms in the garden-shed. I suppose if I gave him meal-worms everyday, he would have left my birds alone. He is not around anymore.

MariusStegmann

Nice pictures.

Steve

Wow! They're lovely!

How big are they?

That's incredible that they can decapitate a finch! They don't look much bigger themselves! And those beaks look like insect beaks; nothing like the flesh eating raptor beaks. I'd never imagine they could inflict so much damage!

But they really are pretty. Looking at those photos, I can tell they're a species that's fresh and full of personality!

What a dilemma... I'd be torn between watching them or shooing dad away from the aviary.

Rox awesome pictures once again. Do you sit there and snap all those actions? Great job

MariusStegmann@MiaCarter@delray

Marius, we started feeding him dried mealworms thinking he might leave the birds alone but now he just hassles them on a full stomach...

Mia, they are actually quite effective little hunters. Mice, birds, lizards etc, often impaling their pray on a branch or fence. Not very charming but they are full of character and can get quite tame. You can even get them eating out of your hand if you have the time. They get to about 50cm (20inch). They are pretty cool to have around

Brian, thank you! They are basically garden pets and around 24/7. Not hard to photograph at all.

Here is one of the babies and then dad trying to get into the live mealworms. This morning he was shouting his head off because we were 'late' with his mealworms

So awesome

Very nice pictures!