Not your normal carrion eating bird.....

Was sitting in a blind and kept noticing a bird continuously fluttering around the varmint cage on the spin feeder. I noticed it was tugging at what appeared to be a dead Cardinal or Pyrrhuloxia so I decided to take a few pics of it. It was trying to take the head off or eating parts of the dead bird inside the cage. This Shrike would tear off pieces of the dead bird then fly to the ground and eat it. Then fly back up and tug on the dead bird again. One pic you can see a scrap of meat in the birds beak as it flies to the ground.

I had pulled the TC card and found these pics about a week before I took the pics above. They were trying to get the same bird while it was alive.

Nice share. Must say you have some skills with your camera!

High protein meal,

That's pretty cool. I've always been fascinated by those birds. I've seen them out here picking at dead rabbits on the side of the lease road.

Cool pic sequence. Why do you think that bird got into the coon cage? To avoid the birds attacking it?

Some days your the Caracara some days your the Cardinal ...

That bird got into the cage to get to the corn on the spinner plate, they are seed/grain eaters. It must have found a spot in the cage the coons had opened up enough to slip in. Then could not find it back. It could have been killed by a hawk also and then it could not get it out of the cage.

Amazing

Really neat pictures. Thanks for sharing.

That's some really good pics.

Really cool
Great flight pictures of the shrike

Shrikes area also called "Butcher Birds" for their habit of impaling insects and other small creatures with thorns to eat later. They've also been known to use the barbs on a fence.

Guess they don't mind a free meal as well! Cool pics STX. Love the TC series of the hawks hunting the bird as well.

Isn't that the truth!

Great pics STX as always!

Why the varmint cage? I thought you were running Eliminator plates?

I do on my place I live on but this feeder has been on that place since 2004. I tried to put the Eliminator Plate on that feeder in Sept but needed to remove the downspout and did not have the right tools with me.

Wow, interesting photos! I thought surely, that little bird just wants feathers for nesting material... then finished reading your post. Crazy!

Love the second set of photos too.

Neat photos. It looks like a pack of Harris Hawks in the second sequence.

Nothing like a good bird head appetizer

Awesome pictures

Butcher birds is what we have always called them. Look for large insects, lizards, and even small mice impelled on thorns and barbed wire. I've read they store them that way to eat later, but after watching a pair nest and raise chicks this year, I'm convinced it's for display and marking territory. It was always the male sticking lizards and grasshoppers on thorns, but only while the female was there watching and they never ate them...

I have been training these Caracara's to be Attack Birds and bring me Coons and lay at my feet STX

Second sequence Harris Hawks?

Yes.

Cool!

Great pics.