[mou] Singing northern shrike in Duluth...

[SCmzd at aol.com]

Returned to Minnesota Point, park point recreation area in Duluth today and  
was drawn to the call of a bird that sounded at first like a sick catbird.   
Upon finding the birds location (near the airport on the lake side),
I discovered that it was a northern shrike.  I slowly approached the  bird 
expecting it to take off at any second as is my normal expectation for this  
species.  I was amazed by how tolerant of my presence the bird was.
The shrike continued to vocalize although now it was clearly singing.   A 
song very much like the nearby song sparrow.  In fact, at one point a  song 
sparrow was singing quite nearby and the shrike appeared to be answering or  
challenging it, much like song sparrows due with each other.  Then the  shrikes song 
changed again and sounded like the musical trill of the dark eyed  junco!  
All in all, this shrike's vocal abilities were most  impressive.  The shrike 
barely opened it's bill when it sang, so that it  was almost ventriloquil like.  
The shrike let me approach to within 15 ft.  of it!  During the time I watched 
the shrike, an eastern phoebe and a black  capped chickadee also came within 
15-10 ft of the bird, seemed like easy  striking distance to me, but the 
shrike did not even seem to care.   Eventually the shrike flew away and I lost 
sight of it.  Truly cool  experience, and leaves me wondering about the exact 
purpose of it's  singing.  I will post a picture of the shrike in the minnesota 
gallery of  MOU, look under "recent".  Happy Birding,  and by the way, this is 
the  third time in the last week I have observed a northern shrike at park 
point rec.  area.  On 4/17/08, there were two of them hawking for insects at the 
soccer  field.  ----Shawn Zierman.



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