I finally saw my first Northern Shrike. I took advantage of the sunshine on Friday afternoon and made a quick trip around the auto tour at RNWR. On the home stretch, I saw a bird fly in front of my car and land in the blackberry bushes to the right. I tried to position my car so that I could get a picture, but it flew off on the opposite side of the berm that runs along the road.I took a chance that it might come back and drove up to the place it disappeared and waited. Sure enough, it flew up to the top of some branches of a bush. I was able to get a few decent shots of it before it flew off into the grassy area to the left and landed close enough to keep an eye on it.
I watched for a couple of minutes until it suddenly reached down and plucked a rodent up from the ground.
It only held on to it for a moment before it dropped it again and stood there as the rodent kicked. This lasted for what seemed like about a half a minute. I not sure, but it seemed like it was waiting for the rodent to die.
It then scooped up the rodent and flew off.
